On the Radar: Using Search Engines
By Evan
Teed, Vancouver
A few years ago airplane giant Boeing held
a press conference to unveil the creation of their website.
One reporter asked why Boeing would spend time and money on
creating a website since every potential client in the world
knows who they are, what they make, and how to contact them.
The response from Boeing was. “Because we want to STAY
in business.” Boeing recognized that the world had evolved
and that today most people in first-world nations look to the
Internet for just about everything. If you’re not on the
web, you’re losing business.
The Internet has most decidedly boomed. In
1993, there were 284 locations on the Internet. As of January
1, 2003 there were 171,000,000 domain hosts in use. In 1995,
the largest search engine database was AltaVista, and it had
most of the Internet categorized. Today Google and FASTsearch
own the largest databases, yet neither one of them has even
10% of the Internet covered. It’s estimated that more
than 8,000,000 webpages are added to the Internet every day.
None of the search engines are able to keep up with that pace.
Every website wants that single top position in the major search
engines, or at least to be on the all-important first page.
This is all about how to make it there and
the common myths to avoid.
It is very frustrating but in web world nothing
is static: the information here is correct as of June, 2003
but I can guarantee that some of it (I can’t begin to
guess which) will no longer be current by autumn because the
major search engines are constantly revising, updating, “tweaking”
their criteria of how they select and position web pages. The
good news is that once you do get a general understanding of
how to web-position yourself, it isn’t hard to keep up
with the changes.
The Big Boys
The top search engines, in order of searches
performed are: Yahoo!, MSN, Google, AOL, AltaVista, GoNetwork,
Lycos, and Excite. These eight control somewhere between 94
and 98 percent of all searches performed on the world wide web.
So being listed on them is important, and being listed on other
search engines in reality is not.
Meta-tags
For the uninitiated, let’s discuss a
basic component of every good web page wishing to be listed
in the search engines: meta-tags. Meta-tags are lines of HTML
code embedded into web pages (but not visible on screen) that
are used by search engines to store information about your site.
These tags contain keywords, descriptions, copyright information,
site titles and more. They are among the numerous things that
the search engines look for, when trying to evaluate a web site.
Each search engines uses them in a different
way and puts a different degree of weight on their importance;
and they frequently change how they use meta-tag info too. Google
currently puts heavy weight on the quantity of links you have
going to or coming from your site, and the meta-tags carry a
light degree of weight. Altavista places an emphasis on the
description tag and Inktomi indexes both the full text of the
page as well as the meta-tags. Exactseek states that your site
will NOT be indexed at all if it doesn’t have both title
and description meta-tags.
This is very important, because it is not uncommon
for sloppy web designers to create sites with either no meta-tags
or only a title meta-tag. In the past two years I have advised
at least twenty different escorts that their web site had no
meta-tags beyond the title.
Creating the right meta-tags is important. Even for the search
engines who don’t put much weight in the meta-tags. they
do pay attention to them closely to see if the content of your
page matches the meta-tag contents. This is because a spammer
selling blenders may include “mp3” or “viagra”
in their meta-tags because they know those are words frequently
searched. The search engine spiders will, however, recognize
that these words don’t fit the content of the page and
they will get banned!
How do you get meta-tags, or make sure yours
are good?
Meta-tags should always be placed in the <head>
area of an HTML document. This starts just after the <html>
tag, and ends immediately before the <body> tag. Here’s
how a very basic set should look:
<title>Evan Teed Escort</title>
<meta name="description" content="Vancouver
gay male escort">
<meta name="keywords" content="bottom sex
fucking canada professional oral">
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow">
Links
I mentioned that Google puts a lot of weight
on the links you have with other web sites. This is very important
because Google is by far the biggest supplier of search data
displayed on the web. Not only does Google provide the search
data for it’s own search site, Google.com, but it provides
content for Yahoo! and AOL search sites as well. So paying attention
to your links has great impact on the three biggest search engines.
There are a lot of escort websites that contain no links to
other web sites. Either it is something they just haven’t
thought about, the owner has reasoned it detracts from the “look
and feel” of the site, or ruins the integrity of the design.
Fine: if you want to stick with those views just accept that
you’ll NEVER get a good listing on the biggest search
engines. Do you want to attract more customers, or do you want
to be a slave to the integrity of your site design?
The more links the better. Note both links
leading TO your site and FROM your site are important in getting
good positioning. Here are a few ideas:
Get yourself listed on escort listings sites.
There are a lot of FREE ones that won’t even cost you.
Put reciprocal links to those you’re listed on.
Get yourself listed on gay listing sites
(which sometimes call themselves “search” sites).
Put reciprocal links to those you’re listed on.
Join webrings that match you (if you live
in the United States DON’T try joining a German Escorts
webring!)
Join banner exchanges. Best is the gay escort
banner exchange at www.escortx.net/banner
because with it you are swapping banner links with other escorts
and building your own network of escort contacts. History
proves that clients appreciate this.
[Editor’s Note] Or link or exchange
banners with a resource site like HOOK which features TONS
of its own links! Find your HOOK
banners here!
Truth or Myth
Many of the common beliefs about how to get
positioned in search engines are actually counter productive.
Others are just useless. Here’s a list in no particular
order:
1. Don’t try and trick the search engines
in any way. This will only make them ban you. Examples of
this are invisible text, and duplicate identical pages.
2. Don’t jam your meta keywords. Anything
more than about 15 words and your listing will start to drop.
So choose your words carefully to get the best most useful
ones. Think when doing it: the word escort will get only guys
who are searching using the word “escort,” but
using the word “escorts” will get BOTH guys who
are searching for “escort” and for “escorts”
in most engines.
3. Choose only keywords that really do apply
to you. Using a keyword like “electronics” in
your website will soon get caught by the search engines and
get you banned as a spammer.
4. There is no reason to submit your web
site to the search engines more than ONCE. The whole idea
that you need monthly submission is a total myth created and
sustained by companies wanting to sell you their submission
service! I know it’s hard to convince you that one time
is enough because the myth has been repeated so many times
it is now believed as fact. Here’s proof that you don’t
need to: I have never—read NEVER—submitted my
escort web site to Google. Yet just try doing a search for
'vancouver gay escort'—as I’m writing this I come
up in positions #3, #4, #5, and #6! Google spiders found my
site, and my careful preparation of the site for the search
engines gave me the positioning I want.
5. Don’t use the same keyword list
and title for every page in your site. Each page should be
individually tailored in ALL ways or you are selling yourself
short. (How do you think I got four placings on one search
page?!) Search engine spiders will see one page in your site
as more relevant for a particular keyword when compared to
another too. By matching the keywords for the page content
you can multiply your listings and get higher listings—in
ways the search engines actually like!
6. Don’t submit dynamic pages such
as ASP or Cold Fusion: spiders read only basic HTML. If your
site was developed in an advanced format make sure there is
at least some static content for the spiders to read.
7. Don’t use frames. Aside from the
various other problems why frames are abhorred by most web
developers, spiders hate them and it really makes your site
read as a one-page web site with almost no content to them.
That guarantees you a very, very poor position.
8. Make all pages accessible to the spiders
within 1 or 2 levels of the home page. They don’t like
to “go deep.” Frankly, neither do guys visiting
sites! Both spiders and people like clean, simple easy-to-follow
layout.
9. Don’t expect to be listed overnight.
Search engines are often bogged down with so many submissions
that it can take weeks to get to yours, and the optimization
only happens about once every 26 days.
10. Most important of all: GET THOSE RECIPROCAL
LINKS!!! I’ve already discussed this above.
11. If your website is done completely in
Flash, in literal fact it is ONE page. So you are very limited
in how you can position yourself in the search engines. You
need to balance the quality of your marketing with the visual
look of your site. All-Flash sites may look neat, but they
damage your business—not only due to limiting you on
the search engines, but because the majority of clients are
still on 56k dial-up modems and will get tired of waiting
for your site to load. Then you’ve lost them.
12. Search engine spiders cannot read mapped
links. If your website uses mapping for the internal links
you need to also put the links in small text down at the bottom
of every page so that the spiders can see your site has more
pages to catalog.
13. “We will submit your site to 10,000
search engines” is at best a stretching of the truth,
and at worst an outright lie. There aren’t 10,000 search
engines out there. Period. The guys who claim they’re
gonna submit you to 10,000 “search engines” are
usually submitting you to Free For All (FFA) listing sites—including
putting a link to you on their own web site, which will get
you exactly 0 visitors a year. Also, your link will usually
appear for a very short time because most of the FFA sites
push you off the page as soon as new links are added. The
only thing you will get from this method is a helluva lot
of unsolicited advertising: spammers LOVE using these things
to collect email addresses.
14. The idea that it is not possible to do
good search engine optimization yourself is another myth spread
by the companies wanting to sell you their service. You are
the BEST one to do it. You know your site and service better
than anyone to make all the best input. If you follow instructions
it is something that can usually be done without many hours
of work.
15. You have to pay a big annual fee to get
listed on Yahoo!. Well, yes—and no. Yahoo charges adult
sites over $600 annually to be catalogued. However I have
never paid Yahoo one cent, yet “vancouver gay escort”
shows me in #1 and #2 position! Remember; Google feeds Yahoo!,
so while I’m not catalogued by Yahoo!, the page displayed
on screen is Yahoo and Google data mixed, and there I am.
So while I am not listed on Yahoo!, but I am displayed in
the search results they provide.
How do you get all this together, then
do the submission?
First, I will give your site a brief overview
and provide general suggestions specific to your site for free—just
email me. For a nominal fee, I’ll provide you with a specific
list of alterations you need to make to optimize your site for
search engine positioning; and for clients of my web hosting
service I wave the fee.
But if you want to side-step me and go directly
to the goods, I recommend two different services: SelfPromotion.com
gives excellent advice just like I will. Just take the time
to read through everything step-by-step, then on their site
you can submit your site to several of the major search engines.
It’s all provided by donation: you simply pay him whatever
you feel his service is worth. And for Chrissake, be fair if
you use it ‘cause it really is valuable.
The other option I suggest for website
submission is, use the same program that those submission services
use! It’s called SubmitWolfPro and really is very economical
to purchase.
Being well positioned in search engines is possible. It just
takes a bit of time, and very little money.
Evan
Teed holds a MBA and was a corporate vice-president before
he got tired of the rat race. Today Evan is a working escort
based out of Vancouver, BC and operates a variety of services
geared at escorts including web hosting services, the Escort
Resource site (free), and the Escort Banner Exchange. Traveling
frequently, Evan enjoys meeting other escorts. Interests include
jogging, web development, and artificial insanity.
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