Search Engine Guide

YOUR WEBSITE IS OF LITTLE VALUE IF PEOPLE CAN'T FIND IT AND NOBODY VISITS.

Search engines are used by almost every Internet user to find information through "keyword" or "key phrase" searches or by selection of a relevant category. High rankings in the world's top search engines is the key to a successful website.

There are three important considerations related to search engines: the user search, the means by which the search engines gather information about existing websites on the Internet and the method employed for ranking the results being displayed.

MegaIQ takes great pride in our continuing attention to the changing environment of search engine methodologies.  We understand what elements, within a website's design and the underlying engineering, are critical in achieving high rankings in the predominant search engines on the Internet. 

Very often, if not engineered properly, the implementation of "sizzle" within a website will diminish the potential for achieving high rankings. MegaIQ builds its websites with a primary design focus on the elements necessary to make sure your website will achieve high rankings in the search engines and understands how to incorporate the desired "sizzle" within that architecture.

There are two basic types of Search Engines:

Indexed Search Engines - These search engines, such as Google and Excite simply require the address of your website and they use software often referred to as "spiders" or "robots" to read the content of your website's pages, also known as "crawling".  The spider will read the first page of your website and then crawl to each page that is linked from that first page.  Based on the content of each of your web pages, the indexing search engine will then include each of the pages it finds in its database.  When a user performs a search, the search engine will display results of the web pages in the order of their perceived relevance to that particular search phrase.  This relevance, or "ranking", is determined by a variety of factors.

Directory Search Engines - Directory search engines, such as Open Directory, generally do not employ spiders to crawl your website.  These search sites require you to select a category in which you want your website to appear.  A human moderator will visit your website to confirm that your website is relevant to that category.  In some cases, ranking of results will be based on levels of relevance.  In other cases, the results are merely in alphabetical order.

Search Engines such as Yahoo do not always rely solely on their own database of know websites.  Yahoo, the most predominant search engine on the Internet, draws its search results from a variety of sources including its own database, Google's database and  "Sponsored" website links from Overture's database.

Although Yahoo now charges a fee of $300/year to be included in their "directory" database, Google does not charge a fee for being listed in their "Indexed" database.  Therefore, if your website is listed in Google, it will appear in the search results at Yahoo (if you have the proper relevance for a user's search phrase.)  As such, your website must be designed properly to achieve high rankings within the Indexed search engines if you wish to appear in the top 10 results at Yahoo.

RELEVANCE - The bottom line on being ranked highly in the search results, for a given search phrase, is that your web page must contain content which is "relevant" to that search phrase.  If you want to be found by people searching for "Website Designers", yet the words "website" and "designers" do not appear anywhere in the text on your web page, you are not going to show up.  Factors related to relevance vary from search engine to search engine, however, most indexing search engines rely on many of the same key factors such as the page Title and textual content.

LINK POPULARITY - Link popularity has become one of the important factors affecting your rankins at search engines.  This is a measure of how many links there are at other websites pointing to your website.  Links to your site, from other sites that are highly ranked in the search engines has added weight.  As a website owner, you should take time to look for websites on the internet where you can obtain free links to your site.  You should also endeavor to trade links with your business associates, friends and associations.

META TAGS - Do not be misled by companies who suggest that simply including hidden "meta tags" in your web page's header will achieve high rankings.  Meta tags are necessary and very useful, but, in and of themselves they will not achieve the desired results.  Only a coordinated combination of all the necessary factors will insure good results.  As you can see in the chart below, not all search engines place the same importance on the different meta tags.

DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS:

FLASH - Often times, website designers use Macromedia Flash to deliver synchronized multi-media presentations on a web page.  Although Flash presentations can be very glamourous and appealing, there are serious limitations associated with the implementation of Flash if it is not done properly.

Flash components (graphics, sounds and links) are embedded in a movie file.  The movie file is normally very large making the download time for users with a slow, dial-up connection, very long.  Because the content being presented is all embedded in the movie file, search engine spiders cannot "see" that content.  The spider will be unable to follow the links to the other pages in your website, thus preventing those pages from being indexed.  Important keywords, in the textual content embedded in the movie file is also invisible, reducing the potential relevance of your page in relation to those search keywords.

Once again, understanding this limitation is the key to preventing the website from being designed without consideration for how this will impact your search engine rankings.  MegaIQ may employ Flash within the content of a website, where it's use would be in conjunction with other components rather than as the platform for the entire presentation such that it will not reduce the ranking potential of the page.

DYNAMIC WEB PAGES - Some websites are designed using technologies, such as "Active Server Pages" and "DHTML".  These technologies generate the web pages "dynamically" or "on-the-fly".  This is most often employed when the content of the page is coming from an on-line database.

This approach is commonly employed by Real Estate websites and Shopping Carts.  The advantage to this technology is that the owner of the website has the capability of managing their inventory information through an administrative web page that enables them to update the information in the on-line database. 

Many search engine spiders will refuse to index dynamically generated pages into their search engine.  Their reason for this policy is that the content of the page is expected to change frequently so the reliability of the relevance of this page to the search keywords that the spider determines during its visit will probably not be maintained.

MegaIQ encourages its clients to avoid such dynamically generated content.  If self maintenance is an important consideration for the owner of a website, MegaIQ will provide training to the owner's staff on the methods of editing standard web pages so the required maintenance consideration is achieved without sacraficing search engine exposure.

SUBMISSION CONSIDERATIONS:  

1.  Prior to submitting your website to the major search engines, it is imperative that your web pages are optimized for the keywords relevant to your website.  MegaIQ is skilled at reviewing the structure and content of your website to determine if additional optimization is required and will perform any necessary changes to insure favorable results.

2.  In order to achieve high rankings, where link popularity is a factor, you need numerous links from other websites.   MegaIQ uses an automated submission process which gives your website links in over 1,000 minor search engines and directories.  Although these listings will not directly generate any significant levels of traffic to your website, they will boost your link popularity, improving your rankings in the search engines where it counts.

	SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION CHECKLIST
	SEARCH ENGINE REGISTRATION LINKS

ONLY A COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH TO DESIGN AND ENGINEERING CAN INSURE THAT YOUR WEBSITE WILL NOT ONLY BE ASTHETICALLY APPEALING, BUT, PEOPLE WILL FIND YOU ON THE INTERNET!

MegaIQ provides that comprehensive design strategy in every website we build.

That's why we call ourselves, "Website Architects", not just designers.