How Search Engines Work
Search Engine Registration
Acceptance into the Search Engines
How High your Website Ranks
When can I find my Website in the Search Engines?
Website Marketing
Search Engine Optimization and Pay-Pay-Click Ads
Why Aren’t my Ads Showing Up?
How Search Engines Work
This is important to read and understand now as your website has gone LIVE on the World Wide Web.
We want to address how the Search Engines work. This is one of the most confusing aspects of the Internet, and yet it's the most important! Google is the most popular search engine on the Web. Search engines use regularly updated indexes to operate quickly and efficiently. Search engine usually refers to a Web search engine, which searches for information on the public Web.
First and foremost, please understand that ALL of the search engines use different algorithms (rules & formulas) in how they rank Websites when someone performs a keyword search. Each search engine uses a uniquely different ranking system, and these algorithms are closely-kept trade secrets that are changed often.
Search Engine Registration
While all search engines have robots that scurry around the web looking for new websites to add to their index, it’s always a good idea to register your website with the search engines. It can take up to 6 months to appear in the organic results of the search engines. It’s important to know that this is not immediate.
Acceptance Into The Search Engines
We cannot guarantee acceptance into ANY of the search engines. No one can. We are limited by only having the knowledge of registering your site in the top engines, and utilizing search engine optimization techniques in the design of your website. Reports say that search engines only accept ~20% of all Web sites registered with them. Rest assured, though, NONE of the websites that LunaWeb has developed have ever been rejected.
Search engines take different amounts of time that they take to accept you into their indexes. Alta Vista is the quickest - it 'normally' takes 48 hours, and Yahoo! takes the longest - 3 - 6 months. Most of the others take anywhere from 2 weeks to 16 weeks.
If you'd like to learn more about how the search engines work, here's a great place to start: http://www.searchenginewatch.com/
If you have specific questions about your ranking or about a specific engine, please go to Search Engine Watch and read all about that specific search engine you have a question about OR give us several days to respond as explanations of this sort are lengthy and take time to research.
AFTER your website has been accepted, it's not time to sit back and wait. You need to monitor the engines each month to see if they haven't kicked you out. Again, NONE of the search engines have an explanation for this, but they are doing it every day. Many times their software (spiders) go out to update their indexes (listings) and if they see a dead link, they delete that site from their index. They are also kicking sites out for no reason and you do not get an email from them telling you this.
How High your Website Ranks
No one can guarantee how HIGH you rank in the search engines. Again, we rely on you to tell us your top keywords and we, in-turn, program our sites to utilize the current algorithms which should help you to rank higher. Luckily, there are ways for your website to show up higher in the search engines. Read more below.
Ways to Market your Website
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of making a website search engine friendly. It typically involves making changes to the website itself that are designed to help the site rank higher in the organic (i.e. - free) search results. There is an extra charge for this service.
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, offers you the chance to pay to have your ad appear when web surfers type your chosen keywords into the search engine. In these programs, you bid on certain keywords or phrases and your advertisement appears when a search is made for those words or phrases -- usually near, but not as part of the traditional search results. Please let us know if you are interested in this service.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Why are my ads not showing up?
- First, all ads must be approved before they show up in the search engines. It generally takes up to 48 hours for this to happen.
- If your keyword phrase does not appear in the copy on ANY of the pages of your website, your ad will not be accepted. For instance, if ‘hip replacement options’ does not appear on any of your web pages, then an ad with this keyword phrase will not be accepted. You must show good faith when pointing an ad to a web page.
- If the ‘daily recommended budget’ by Google is not used, then your ad will not appear every single time someone types this phrase into Google’s search field. For instance, if you have 20 keyword phrases associated with PPC ads and Google recommends that you spend $200/day to get the most amount of clicks and your budget is not set to $200/day, then your ad will not appear every time someone types your keyword phrases into Google, Yahoo!, and all of their affiliate partners (AOL, Alta Vista, MSN, Ask Jeeves, LookSmart, WhatUSeek, etc.).
Why are my ads showing up on other websites?
This is called “Contextual Advertising” and is offered by Google. When someone pulls up a website that has like content, your ad is shown on that website.
Google offers Contextual Advertising – What exactly is this?
Contextual advertising, sometimes referred to as Content Targeting, is an innovative feature of Google AdWords that enables you to gain more customers easier than ever before. Building on their successful keyword targeting technology, they place highly-targeted AdWords ads on content pages within our extensive network of high-quality partner sites and products. This service, known as contextual advertising, improves the experience of web users by displaying useful ads, and it provides several benefits to Google advertisers:
- ROI Performance: Keyword-targeted contextual ads bring unique, pre-qualified leads for a cost-per-click that you set yourself.
- Extend reach: Increase the number of potential customers that see your ads, and drive more incremental clicks to your website than you could reach with search advertising alone.
- Save Time and Money: Contextual targeting is one of the fastest and easiest ways to get your ads to more relevant places on the Web. And you only pay for clicks that you receive.
What do Contextual Ads Look Like?
Click here for examples:
https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6717&ctx=sibling
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