Transcript Getting your site noticed

IWM14
Publicising your site
How will anyone find your site?
Going public


Host
Domain name
Search engines


Getting noticed
Rising higher
Finding a host
your ISP, e.g. NTL Home, BT Internet, AOL
– will do this on small scale but will give you
an uninteresting name
Get round this via domain forwarding –
submit your domain name to service, who
will forward to your ISP-hosted site
Finding a domain name
Find a name registration service



www.lowcostnames.co.uk
www.greatdomains.com
www.domain.com
or just put “buy domain name UK” into Google
range? .co.uk .com, .org. .eu .info. .biz
price? pgpic.co.uk = £20.56/£5.78 (2yrs) pgpic.com
= £41/£17.98
any sensible names are quickly snapped up
Finding a host
find a web hosting service – they keep your
site on their server, give you connected
email facilities, give use statistics
you pay a sum per month/year
your host will capture download requests
from visitors to your domain name and
direct them to the correct place on the
server (different URL/IP address)
Getting noticed
Search Engine Submission: Getting Listed
Search Engine Optimization: Improving The
Odds
Search Engine Placement & Positioning:
Ranking Well
Search Engine Marketing & Promotion: The
Overall Process
Crawler or directory?
Crawler-based search engines, such as
Google, create their listings automatically.
They "crawl" or "spider" the web, then people
search through what they have found.
If you change your web pages, crawler-based
search engines eventually find these
changes, and that can affect how you are
listed. Page titles, body copy and other
elements all play a role.
Crawler or directory?
A human-powered directory, such as the
Open Directory, depends on humans for its
listings. You submit a short description to the
directory for your entire site, or editors write
one for sites they review. A search looks for
matches only in the descriptions submitted.
Changing your web pages has no effect on
your listing.
Crawler plus directory?
It’s now common for both types of results to
be presented together. Usually, a hybrid
search engine will favour one type of listings
over another. For example, MSN Search is
more likely to present human-powered
listings from LookSmart. However, it does
also present crawler-based results (as
provided by Inktomi), especially for more
obscure queries.
Crawler plus human?
Some search engines complement crawler
based results with human filtering, e.g. BBCi,
which uses Google results plus BBC editors
How does a crawler work?
Crawler-based search engines have three
major elements. First is the spider, also
called the crawler. The spider visits a web
page, reads it, and then follows links to other
pages within the site.
The spider returns to the site on a regular
basis, such as every month or two, to look for
changes.
How does a crawler work?
Everything the spider finds goes into the
second part of the search engine, the index.
The index is a database containing a copy of
every web page that the spider finds. If a web
page changes, the database is updated with
new information.
How does a crawler work?
Sometimes it can take a while for new pages
or changes that the spider finds to be added
to the index. Thus, a web page may have
been "spidered" but not yet "indexed." Until it
is indexed -- added to the index -- it is not
available to those searching with the search
engine.
How does a crawler work?
Search engine software is the third part of a
search engine. This is the program that sifts
through the millions of pages recorded in the
index to find matches to a search and rank
them in order of what it believes is most
relevant.
See www.searchenginewatch.com for details
of differences in search engine algorithms
Getting noticed - listing
 Getting listed in directories, e.g. Yahoo,




About.com (only for substantial sites though)
Can submit non-commercial sites to Yahoo
for free (but may take several weeks for
decision on listing)
Find most appropriate category/region and
click on "suggest a site”
Take careful note of submission instructions
Can pay for Sponsored Listing to move up
list (paid placement) or Paid inclusion to get
place in database
Getting noticed by search
engine software
Use TITLE and meta tags KEYWORDS and
DESCRIPTION
TITLE - should match the user's search
terms, e.g. Ethics of Computing,Brighton
photographers, Geography Department,
Manchester United (are these assumptions
correct?)
Can be quite long 15 - 20 words). Only first
few words are displayed.
Alphabetical order may count for title, so use
Aardvark not Zebra
Meta-tags
<head>
<title>How To Use HTML Meta Tags</title>
<meta NAME="authors" CONTENT=" Danny Sullivan">
<meta NAME="date" CONTENT="20021205">
<meta NAME="channel" CONTENT="internet technology">
<meta NAME="description" CONTENT="This tutorial explains
how to use HTML meta tags, with links to meta tag generators
and builders. From SearchEngineWatch.com, a guide to search
engine submission and registration.">
<link REL="stylesheet" HREF="/css/text.css" TYPE="text/css">
</head>
In Composer – Page Properties
Meta-tags
Meta-tags
Getting noticed
•Craft KEYWORDS carefully.
•Use the keywords your users will think of, not
"tricks" like Britney Spears (aka keyword
spamming)
Don't use multiples of keywords (e.g. Brighton
Brighton Brighton Brighton)
Use synonyms and alternative spellings, e.g.
colour/color, optimize/optimise
Getting noticed
If you use frames, give them title and meta
tags. Some search engines ignore frames in
sites
Put some of your keywords into the page
text near the top of the page - this may also
be indexed by some search engines. But
don't make it a list of keywords, as it may be
displayed in search results and scare people
off.
Getting noticed
If appropriate, use popular search terms,
found e.g. at searchterms.com
Some people recommend key phrases not
words, e.g. visiting clematis gardens in
Sussex
Get linked to from other domains (ask them).
Your site will bask in their popularity
Top terms
Getting noticed
•Craft DESCRIPTION carefully - take "strings"
into account, e.g. educational
•Make sure description includes key words
Encourage clicking
DESCRIPTION is normally what appears on
search engine lists and will influence users to
click or not. Should be 3 lines or so that reads
as flowing prose - max. 50
Sensible TITLE also helps encourage clicking
Having a meaningful domain name helps:
Inspires more confidence
Doesn't tie you to ISP
Some search engines won't list ISP-based
names
Encourage returners
Don't scare people off with redirecting,
"shadow domains”
Don't prevent deep linking (e.g. via robots.txt
file (see http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/exclusion.html for details)
Give sensible page titles for bookmark files
Find out more about visitors
Track your visitors (but not with visible visitor
counter) where did they come from
which page do they enter by
new/returning
what do click trails look like
what search terms did they use
where in the world are they
Find out more
WebMonkey and SearchEngineWatch
the search engines themselves
reverse engineer sites resembling yours