The search engines also have a number of miscellaneous items in their formula. Some of these you have control over and others you don’t. These miscellaneous points include things like:
- The age of your domain. The longer you have been around and the more established you are, the more points you get.
- How long you have bought your domain into the future. If you have secured your domain for the next 10 years, the search engine knows you’re planning to be around. They like this—more points.
- Clean code. The search engines like it when you don’t have programming errors. Check your site with NetMechanic’s HTML Toolbox to see if you have problems with your site.
- Frequency of updates. Search engines like sites that update frequently. They don’t like to send their users to stale sites. More updates, more points.
- Traffic and time users spend on your page. The search engines feel that if you have significant traffic and the users spend time on your site, it must be a valuable resource. They like their users to feel that they have been provided with a valuable resource—more points.
Step 8. Get Yourself on the Maps
All the major search engines show the same sequence of results. At the top of the page are sponsored listings, next is the map, and then the organic listing. If you have a bricks-and-mortar operation, get yourself on the map! How do you do this? Search in Google (“How do I get on Google Maps?” The URL is way too long for me to provide here ☺), follow the links, fill in the form. Repeat for Yahoo! and Bing. It’s free.
Step 9. Manually Submit Your Site to the Search Engines
Search engine submissions need to be handled manually rather than by an automated application. Google and Yahoo! Search both require you to type in your Web address as well as a code that is embedded in a graphic on the submission form page. The text that is embedded on that page is dynamically generated, meaning that it is different for each visitor. Submission software would be unable to read the text embedded in the graphic and, therefore, would be unable to input the required code into the submission form.
To add your site to:
- Google, go to http://www.google.com/addurl
- Yahoo!, go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
- Bing, go to http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx.