The Road to Link Popularity

Author’s note: The terrorist attack on New York City and Washington, D.C., was an attack on all of us, including all of the free world. My thoughts and prayers go out to those directly affected, and I feel grateful to all those involved in the rescue efforts and have tremendous respect for the courage and bravery of those first in who saved hundreds of lives. For ways we can get involved, please visit the American Liberty Partnership Web site.

More and more search engines are using link popularity as a ranking criterion. It all started with Google, and now other search engines, such as MSN, Inktomi, AltaVista, HotBot, Northern Light, and Excite, also use link popularity in their algorithms.

Your link popularity is based on the sites linking to your pages. The factors determining link popularity are the quality of sites linked to yours, the relevance of those sites to yours, the quality of the link’s text, and in some cases even the number of links (but in most cases it’s quality versus quantity).

How do you determine your link popularity, and what can you do with that information to improve your rankings? One way to find your site’s link popularity is to download the Google Toolbar.

How It Works

The Google Toolbar, which installs in seconds, helps you find information from anywhere on the Web (at present it runs only on Windows OS and Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher). It appears just below your browser address box and can be used to search the Web from any page. It has a number of features, but the two concerning link popularity are the following:

• PageRank. You can view Google’s ranking of the current page on a scale of 1-10. For instance, Search Engine Watch has a rank of 8, very high, and no wonder… 10,500 sites point to the home page.
• Page Info. You can access more information about the current page (Cached Snapshot, Similar Pages, and Backward Links). The most important of these is Backward Links. To demonstrate how it works, go to Search Engine Watch. From the Google Toolbar, click on Page Info, then select Backward Links. Google will conduct a backward links search on the site, telling you exactly how many other pages are linked to it. The information is on the blue line above the displayed links: “Searched for pages linking to http://searchenginewatch.com/. Results 1-10 of about 10,500.”

Using Link Popularity for Better Rankings

Now that you know how to determine link popularity, you can use the Google Toolbar to see how your competitors rank. Then you try to beat those rankings by getting more links to your site.

Start by referring to your strategic keyword phrases. Let’s say you sell antiques, and to get higher search engine rankings for that product page you want to boost link popularity for your Web page regarding your keyword phrase.

Search Google using your best keyword phrases; chances are good that your competitor will come up before you. Click the link to that site, and you’ll see a PageRank between 1 and 10 on the Google Toolbar. Check Backward Links, and you’ll find out how many sites linked to that site. Sites listed below the number-one listing will have fewer links.

Your job is to get more links than your competitor, increasing the odds of being listed above your competitor.

Getting lots of quality sites linked to yours is more important than lots of ho-hum sites. And remember that link popularity is only one of several criteria considered by search engines when indexing your site. Also important are Web site design (functionality, fast loading, easy navigation, proper link structure, etc.) and search engine optimization (SEO) both for content and for HTML codes (keyword-rich marketing copy, keywords in title, description, meta tags, etc.). Below are a few tips for improving your link popularity.

Tips for Improving Link Popularity

• Get listed in directories. One of the best ways I know for improving link popularity in search engines is to get listed in the top directories. Start with Open Directory Project, which is free, but also include Yahoo Express and LookSmart Express Submit.If your site is relevant to a section in About.com, submit to that network. Search for industry-specific directories and topical search engines in Search Engine Guide’s Search Engine Directory, and submit to relevant databases.
• Build links. Search for the top key phrases you want to be found for, then review the sites that come up. Visit these sites and select those that are noncompetitive. Ask them to exchange links with your site, giving them reasons why your site is valuable and suggesting where a link to you might be appropriate. These are the best sites to be linked to for your search phrases because their high rankings will improve your link popularity, not to mention increase your traffic if their visitors click your link.
• Redesign your site to promote linkability. Provide quality informational resources and outgoing links on your site, such as links to search engines, news portals, and industry professional organizations. Your outgoing links can be important, too.
• Start a referral program. One of the best ways to get lots of links (and traffic) is to pay for them by offering a referral or affiliate program. You pay only when sales are made, which means the cost comes from your profits and you get links to your site. This may be easier said than done. Starting an affiliate program takes time, research, and planning; nevertheless, it’s a very effective way to improve link popularity if such a program is appropriate for your Web site and products or services.
• Generate content. Write articles in your area of expertise, post them on your site, and submit them to appropriate publications across the Web.

Yahoo! Ups the Ante

Following LookSmart’s lead, Yahoo increased the price of its Express service to $299. This service guarantees your site will be considered by Yahoo editors within seven business days. It’s required for commercial listings but is available for any site. Is this one-time, nonrefundable fee worth the price? You bet!

Getting good positioning in Yahoo is important because it can bring more traffic to your site than all other search engines combined. And not only that: A Yahoo listing helps improve your link popularity, which improves your rankings in other search engines.

The first thing you want to do is to read everything in Yahoo’s How to Suggest Your Site guidelines, familiarizing yourself with the process. Also read the help index, finding answers to any questions you might have.

The procedure is straightforward, and it’s important to get it right. The basic steps, as listed by Yahoo, are these:

1. Check to see if your site is already in Yahoo
2. Find the appropriate category in Yahoo
3. Suggest your site from the appropriate category.

Getting in the Right Category

One of the most important tasks is finding the appropriate category for your site. It’s important to select the best category to begin with because changing your category is extremely difficult and time consuming. In fact, it might be better to ask to be removed from the database, and then start over from the right category.

Create a text file for recording the details of your submission and for drafting answers to questions to be asked by Yahoo in the submission process. Record the date of submission, your URL, the title and the description of your site, and the URL for the category applicable to your site. Review drafted answers for accuracy before entering data, because it’s difficult to request changes in Yahoo once listed.

To determine the appropriate category for your site, search for the two keywords previously identified. Go through all the categories that top-ranking sites belong to. Make a note of the categories that contain sites very similar to yours. If there is only one category with sites similar to yours, use that category to submit your site. If you find more than one appropriate category, select the two categories containing the least number of sites. Your primary category is the one with fewer sites.

Go to the URL of the primary category for your site, click on the “Suggest a Site” link at the bottom of the page, and follow instructions to submit your site.

Of particular importance are two questions Yahoo will ask. First, is there any category in which your site should be listed aside from the one to which you are submitting? If so, mention the URL of the secondary category in this field.

Do you have comments regarding your submission? This is a good place to mention a product or service not offered by many other sites listed in Yahoo You might also mention testimonials, posted articles related to your business, or other relevant content. Comments should be limited to 200 characters.

Getting Listed

Yahoo will notify you by email if your Express listing is accepted. First, you receive an order confirmation, followed by a second email confirming that you’ve been added to the directory. Read this completely, check your listing promptly for accuracy, and report any errors immediately (within 30 days).

Your submission will be added to Yahoo’s What’s New section. Your site will be marked as new and placed at the top of the category for one week. This top placement can result in a temporary traffic spike. But after the first week, your site’s position in the category will be alphabetical by title.

Before actually submitting, you need to do the following:

Check your Web site. Ensure that your site is in top shape (no missing graphics or broken links), loads quickly, has good navigation, and contains unique content with no grammatical errors.

Select your keywords. Select the two most important keywords for your site based on popularity (this can be determined with Wordtracker).

Write your title and description. The title is important because the presence of a keyword in the title helps boost your ranking. And because sites are listed alphabetically by title within the categories. However, your title must be the official name of your site.

Your description should be a single, articulate sentence describing your site and containing two important keywords, placed as close as possible to the beginning. It should be attractive to visitors so they’ll click upon reading it, improving your click popularity and site ranking in Yahoo

It’s important to follow the suggestions below when writing your the description:

• Tell your visitors exactly what they’ll find at your site.
• Avoid hype, words that are all caps, and exclamation marks.
• Write in the third person without pronouns (“company x offers widgets” as opposed to “we offer widgets”).
• Don’t capitalize any word in your description, even the first word.
• Limit your description to about 10-12 words to avoid editing, ensuring your keywords remain intact, although Yahoo allows 25 words max.
• End your description with a period, also to avoid editing.
• Check your description for typos and grammatical errors.

How to Change Your Site’s Listing in Yahoo

Changing your site’s listing is a Herculean task, so don’t try it unless:

• Your site URL has changed.
• Your official site name has changed (necessitating change in title).
• Yahoo erroneously listed your site without a description.
• Your description contains a typo.
• Yahoo placed you in an inappropriate category.
• The nature of your business has changed, so the description is no longer valid.

Go to How to Suggest a Change to Your Yahoo Listing and read the instructions carefully before submitting your change request. In the final text box, provide solid reasons for the changes requested. If your listing isn’t changed within a month, try it again.

If Your Site Is Not Accepted

If your site is not accepted within a month from the submission date, resubmit per instructions above. If your site is still not accepted a month from the second submission, you can write to url-support@Yahoo-inc.com. Or you can call 408-731-3333 for listing support, leaving a message with your URL and the date last submitted. Or write to:

Yahoo Corporation
3420 Central Expressway, 2nd floor
Santa Clara, CA 95051, USA

Provide your URL, the date when you last submitted, the title and description that you used, and the category to which you submitted.

If Your Express Submission Is Rejected

Yahoo will notify you by email if your listing is rejected, explaining why. You have 30 days to respond with changes, but do it ASAP.

The most common reasons for rejecting a Express submission are lack of original content and Web site malfunctions. Correct deficiencies immediately because it’s important not go beyond the 30 days. Reply to Yahoo, indicating that deficiencies have been corrected, politely requesting that your site be reviewed again.

Registering Dynamic Sites

Many sites with dynamically generated web pages (versus static web pages) are not getting indexed and registered by search engines. And it seems that search engines don’t plan to change their environmental variables to make it easier for dynamic sites to get listed.

As you know, an environmental variable is a piece of information or a criterion that an engine uses in its algorithms to index, register, or rank a web page for placement in its database.

When a robot engine spiders or crawls a web site to index a URL domain name, it generally wants to crawl deeper into the site to determine suitability for indexing. If, as it crawls deeper into the site domain, it encounters pages whose URL includes a question mark (?) – an indication that the URL is dynamic – the robot interprets this question mark as an endless permutation of possibilities. Not knowing what to do next, it stops crawling the site.

Consequently, if the robot only has one or two pages of a site to consider for ranking in its database, such a site will appear to be hollow or lacking content, and the URL is not considered worthy of placement in its database. The result is that any dynamic web site might as well be invisible to robot search engines.

Currently, to my knowledge, none of the robot search engines plan to provide a solution for registering dynamic pages – it just doesn’t seem to be an option. Hence, dynamic site owners have turned to search engine optimization specialists using unique methods for creating content with static pages, relying on professional assistance to obtain good rankings.

What is a static page? It is simply an HTML web page with static content; the page can be any .htm or .html web page hosted by a domain name. The content within the page changes only when a human uploads a change to the site content. There are no meta refresh tags to redirect the page to another page and no cloaking or IP redirect delivery.

What is a meta refresh tag? It’s an HTML code tag that tells the browser to wait a specified period of time, perhaps one second, and then substitutes or replaces the page with another. It is commonly referred to as a redirect. Cloaking or IP delivery is a more sophisticated version of redirect.

Given the limitations of a robot’s registering dynamically generated web pages and the dislike it has for redirects, dynamically generated sites have very few choices when it comes to being found. A good search engine optimization specialist can help you deliver good static content; however, doing so takes a significant amount of labor and requires the proper registration techniques.

Registration techniques involve compliance with robot submission practices. The “add URL” page within all robot search engines has compliance guidelines, rules and preferences on how to submit a page or pages to their robot. When you follow these rules precisely, you will get your best results. Unfortunately, the search engines don’t make it easy. And each has its own submission requirements.

For instance, Google will accept only two pages per day; Excite, 25 per week. In some cases, a robot will not want to see the same document again for a specified period of time; Excite, for instance, doesn’t like to see a document again within 60 days. You must therefore track the submission history and/or check the robot before submitting a document again.

People who believe the answer is to resubmit continuously, all the time, are largely mistaken. This will only draw attention to your site and cause the robot to avoid it in the future.

If you have dynamically generated web pages, you have special circumstances to consider when it comes to submitting to robot search engines. It’s nothing that can’t be overcome, but it’s not a slam-dunk.

Remember, good static content, together with proper submission and registration procedures, will produce page-one links to your potentially invisible yet content-rich web site.

Make Way for the Deep Crawl

I think most of you know my position (no pun intended) regarding paid-inclusion programs. In my humble opinion, paid inclusion will show up as a small blip on the screen in the future of search engine optimization (SEO). As with everything else that transforms over time, paid inclusion is only a stepping-stone to the final product.

As you know, paid placement refers to paid listings on GoTo.com and sponsored links on other engines. Paid inclusion guarantees that submitted pages will be listed within an index but doesn’t guarantee positioning. Paid submission speeds up the processing of a listing but doesn’t guarantee the site will be listed. The latest entry in paid services is “Trusted Feed,” which is good news for dynamic sites — more on that below.

You all want to be found, but paid inclusion offers no guarantee of being found anywhere. Furthermore, many of you have large dynamic sites with thousands, and some with millions, of URLs to be crawled and found. Up to now, these dynamic URLs remained “uncrawlable” or invisible to most search engines.

The good news is that the deep crawl is coming, and it will provide you with several options for future search engine positioning (SEP) success.

You may recall an article I wrote last August titled “How Deep Is the Web?” I reported on the existence of a hidden “deep Web” with approximately 500 billion individual documents, most of which are available to the public but not accessible through conventional search engines. That’s because many of these documents use frames or are in database-driven Web sites such as eBay, Amazon.com, and the Library of Congress, which the spiders can’t crawl. As a result, billions of dynamic HTML documents, including Flash, MP3, and video files, have been out of the reach of conventional search engines.

A year later, we’ve had some significant breakthroughs that will enable portals and engines to access the vast, hidden parts of the “deep Web.” These advances will permit the indexing of more than 100,000 large dynamic sites, giving access to information on these database-driven sites to businesses, researchers, and consumers.

Good News for Frame Sites

Google and Inktomi can now index sites using frames. Google can crawl any URL that a browser can read, but most other search engines can’t crawl URLs with the characters “?” and “&,” which are used to separate common gateway interface (CGI) variables (e.g., “http://www.towerrecords.com/music.asp?genre=Country”).

Some people get around this by creating static versions of the site’s dynamic pages for search engine crawlers. But this is a lot of work, and it takes time and continuous maintenance. A better strategy is to rewrite your dynamic URLs in a syntax that search engines can crawl. For details on how to implement this strategy, visit Spider Food’s Dynamic Web Page Optimization.

New Services for Dynamic Sites

Trusted Feed is a new service from AltaVista announced at Search Engine Strategies last week. It’s ideal for submitting Web pages that are traditionally difficult for crawlers to index, such as framed pages and pages with dynamic content. It allows businesses to submit 500 or more URLs via an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) feed directly into AltaVista’s index. In addition, partners receive detailed performance reporting for each URL submitted — important for determining return on investment (ROI).

Trusted Feed-like programs, which simultaneously position relevant keywords and phrases within a search engine index, will produce exactly what we’ve all been waiting for — targeted, high-quality, and relevant traffic for large dynamic sites.

The first of the Trusted Feed systems have begun at Alta Vista and Inktomi. Of course, they are pay-per-click (PPC) models and will compete directly with the more traditional GoTo PPC accounts. These new paid services will require close monitoring to determine the best ROI. Those who contract with SEO companies maintaining customized monitoring tools, techniques, services, and allies will see significant savings in their SEO and cost-per-click (CPC) campaigns.

New Technologies for Deep Web Crawl

Quigo recently launched a series of new technologies for forward-thinking portals and engines, allowing those with the ability to manage and access deep Web content to surpass competitors that use traditional crawling techniques.

And those with entrepreneurial blood will see the light go on! With the ability to feed the huge dynamic site database into their own databases, enabling users to search deeply and directly to exactly what they’re looking for — do you think there’s any revenue opportunities here? You’d better believe it.

Quigo’s QUIBOT remotely crawls through pages from the deep Web, enabling it to index a large portion of the deep Web and making this content available to users searching on Quigo and partner portals. It does not require any modifications, such as cloaking or doorway pages, on the indexed Web sites.

Quigo’s DeepWebGateway enables search engines to index deep Web content that they do not access directly. This technology also solves other problems related to deep Web crawling and indexing, such as spider traps and personalization.

Quigo’s DeepWebSonar is for portals and features page indexing, query analysis, and a unique ranking system. By redirecting user queries to DeepWebSonar, portals can immediately offer deep Web results to their users.

The idea of providing large dynamic Web sites with 100 percent visibility is going to rock. The portals, engines, and directories that provide the best services both to users and to advertisers are going to lead the pack.

GiveYourself a Little More Reach

It’s common knowledge among search engine optimization (SEO) experts and do-it-yourselfers that job one is to get listed in major search vehicles, such as Yahoo, Google, Inktomi, dmoz, and LookSmart. But other, lesser-known search engines are growing and can give you additional reach.

One of these, AlltheWeb.com, recently relaunched with significant changes, making it more usable and relevant. AlltheWeb is part of Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), a search services software company founded in 1997 by scientists from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. FAST provides search capabilities in three environments: Internet (AlltheWeb.com), enterprise (Site Search, Intranet Search, and PartnerSite), and mobile (Mobile Search).

I’d like to highlight some of the features and benefits of AlltheWeb and touch briefly on the benefits of enterprise and mobile search. I’m not affiliated with FAST, nor did the company approach me to do a story. I simply feel that this information would be of value to those who are not yet aware of it.

What’s Unique About AlltheWeb?

In the Internet environment, AlltheWeb indexes over 625 million full-text pages and crawls over 1.6 billion URLs. It also indexes 70 million multimedia files, 2 million MP3 files, and 150 million FTP listings. It receives approximately 8 million queries per day. Below are a few key differentiators that distinguish it from competitors:

• Web page and multimedia results in one search. Instead of having to conduct multiple searches to find Web pages, images, video, MP3s, and FTP files, one search turns up multiple results on the same page. Try “Aerosmith,” for example, and you’ll get Web-page results along with a sidebar (on the right) listing images and videos. Click “MP3″ at the bottom, and those results appear.
• Automatic search tips. AlltheWeb is the first to leverage a set of artificial-intelligence algorithms to analyze user behavior in real time, providing tips to help users modify and narrow their searches (tips appear in a sidebar on the right).
• Language capabilities. Visitors can search in 46 languages, more than any other search engine.
• Fresh search index. AlltheWeb is fully refreshed every 9 to 12 days, about five times as often as other search engines.

This search tool seems to be a step forward for helping users find what they want quickly and easily. AlltheWeb is a search engine that will be used more and more by business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) users, so here’s how to get your site listed.

Submission Information

The submission process is easy. Go to the submit page and fill in the URL and your email address. You only need to submit one page from each site/host. Submitting multiple pages per site will neither reduce indexing time nor increase ranking.

The time it takes to be indexed varies, depending on factors such as the number of pages in the site and whether the site has already been visited recently. Normally, sites are indexed within a couple of weeks. There is no guarantee that pages will be indexed when submitted, but resubmitting on a regular basis will not affect indexing time.

A complete Webmaster FAQ is available.

Enterprise and Mobile Services

FAST also offers search services of interest to B2B andB2C marketers. Its enterprise and mobile search tools are described below.

• FAST Site Search is based on the same core technology as AlltheWeb. Site Search allows Web visitors to easily find the information they seek. It can be used to good advantage by portals, vortals, application service providers (ASPs), corporate Web sites, online publishers, and consultancy firms. The frequency of indexing can be set by the site administrator to allow for the most up-to-date and relevant catalog of information. Documents added within the last few minutes, hours, days, or weeks can be available to customers immediately. Through Site Search hosting, FAST can maintain a company’s site index, greatly reducing infrastructure costs.
• FAST Intranet Search is based on the same core technology that powers AlltheWeb. Intranet Search allows companies to provide employees with easy access to critical corporate data. Intranet Search supports over 250 document formats and 46 languages. The interface works like a search engine, requiring little or no user training. It allows for 10 queries per second, the fastest available, according to FAST.
• FAST PartnerSite is a new service. The idea is that you be found by the right visitors and that you let them find what they want on your site or the Web. This is the first service to combine guaranteed Web search inclusion with hosted site search services, using a pricing structure that is attainable for small business as well as large corporations. PartnerSite is now in beta testing. Its members are fully integrated into the FAST Web Search index, enabling sites to gain visibility through its network of portal partners and search destinations, including Terra Lycos, LookSmart, and AlltheWeb. PartnerSite members are also re-indexed daily to ensure the most up-to-date Web search results.
• FAST Mobile indexes over 20 million wireless application protocol (WAP), i-mode, Handheld Device Markup Language (HDML), and personal digital assistant (PDA) documents for access over wireless devices. FAST claims it to be the largest mobile index available today.

So there you have it. AlltheWeb is an excellent database to get indexed in, it’s free, and it claims to maintain the freshest index on the Web. Its revenue streams appear to come from the FAST enterprise and mobile environments, not from Internet paid-placement or paid-inclusion business models.

Dominate the Search Engines for the Price of a Happy Meal

Last week, search engines were accused of deceptive advertising, and many of us were left wondering if the accusation was justified. Consumer watchdog Commercial Alert, founded by Gary Ruskin and Ralph Nader, filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against eight search engines. It alleged that paid placement and paid inclusion without clear disclosure are unlawful, claiming that such listings “look like information from an objective database selected by an objective algorithm. But really they are paid ads in disguise.”

You can see my entire point of view regarding this subject by visiting I-Advertising.

The complaint drew a parallel with the FTC cases against producers of infomercials. Fact is, though, there’s a tremendous difference between an infomercial on TV and a paid search listing. It all comes down to the value provided to the user or consumer.

Kathryn Shantz, director of corporate communications at LookSmart, had this to say: “What’s important is [whether] search results are relevant to users’ needs.”

I would agree; as a user, this is what’s most important to me. Search engine users are looking for information, usually in conjunction with a buying decision. At least 40 percent of searches are commercial in nature, and the demand for commercially based listings is, therefore, huge.

Currently, the vast majority of listings on search engines are not paid placements. Both paid and nonpaid listings provide the same information to the user. Again, the goal is to provide the most relevant results to users.

I also discovered that, so far, the FTC has not contacted the search engines. Shantz stated, “LookSmart has not been contacted by the FTC for any of its services or products. We believe these allegations are without merit. What’s important to users is relevant search results — we provide a tremendous service that is free to users.”

AltaVista spokesperson Andrew Wong also said the FTC hadn’t contacted the company yet. “AltaVista is going to wait until the FTC comes back with a ruling, a position we believe all of the search engines named are going to take. We can’t really defend ourselves until the FTC decides whether or not we are practicing unfairly,” he said.

When asked about having an industry-wide standard for the term or definition for the listings causing the controversy, Wong admitted that it’s an interesting point, but he didn’t see it happening unless the FTC comes out with a statement.

Wong further stated, “We have asked our users whether or not they understand the distinctions between featured and partnered listings, and we have learned that they understand that those sites pay for those positions. In fact, if you do a search on AltaVista and get a featured or partnered site as a result, you can click on the phrase ‘featured site’ and get the definition.”

Talk About Deception…

Of course, the FTC has to take all complaints and process them with due diligence. But what about all the seriously disingenuous search engine service offerings I receive via spam, such as this one: “Dominate the Search Engines for the price of a HappyMeal”?

I am so sick and tired of the increasing volume of such spam as this:

Guaranteed Top 10 Search Engine Placement — No Front End Development Fees!! Most development firms charge $2500-$10,000 for optimization services plus monthly maintenance of $150-$250. We do it all for $149 per month and guarantee your top 10 position on your keywords.

So, let me get this straight. First of all, Happy Meals are now $149? And secondly, I can save $9,851 if I use their “we do it all search engine optimization service”? Something tells me that $10,000 is still worth $10,000, not $149, and that I’ve been deceived by the subject line, “Dominate the Search Engines for the price of a Happy Meal.” Should this be considered deceptive, and can I cite these people in a complaint?

If Ruskin and Nader want to be genuine in their quest to clean up deceptive advertising practices, I would suggest they take a look at the entire range of industry practices — and include deceptive email spam in their complaint.

International Search Engine Update

My thanks to all those who have taken the time to update my international search engine picks. I’m happy to report the following postscript to my last two articles.

According to the best searcher in China, the most popular Chinese search engines are these:

• SINA.com
• Sohu.com
• http://cn.yahoo.com/
• NetEase
• http://www.google.com/intl/zh-CN/
• 263.net/

And finally, a good site for international search engines in Holland, Germany, and France: Vice Versa.

Optimizing for International Search Engines: Part 2

I wrote on international search engines a few weeks ago and received an amazing amount of feedback. Some people sent updates, others requested more information on Latin American, Spanish, and Portuguese sites. So here’s a smorgasbord of international options and ideas.

European Search Engines, Directories and Lists is an excellent resource maintained by industry enthusiasts. It claims to be the leading directory of European search engines and directories on the Internet; it is updated regularly and lists search resources that allow free registration.

French Search Engines

Readers agreed that Voila and Yahoo France were top picks. But there are a few more: Nomade.fr, Lycos France, and LookSmart France (a directory) are popular, and you should be listed on those. If you’re looking for a business-to-business (B2B) directory, go to INDEXA, which lists all the Web sites of companies doing business in France (foreign and domestic). Several people wrote about the new French search engine KartOO, which sports an interesting design and just enough English so you can get by.

I’m told by Sebastien Levaillant that the most up-to-date information on French search engines and directories is available on Abondance. Click here for French directories and here for French search engines.

German Search Engines

We were right on with FIREBALL (a big search engine that indexes pages in one-seven days) and WEB.DE, which is really huge. But according to Christian Vollmert of luna-park GmbH, Aladin no longer exists and searchers are being redirected to Abacho. Also very important in Germany are allesklar.de, DINO-Online, and Infoseek.de. Google Deutsch is growing fast and becoming very popular.

Currently, you don’t have to pay for a submission on Yahoo Deutschland, but some say it would be better to pay because it’s impossible to get listed. You can get listed on LookSmart as a directory service from AltaVista.de at a cost of about 159 euros. Excite Deutschland closed on June 30, referring users to www.excite.com and www.excite.co.uk. (Note: The same thing happened to Excite France.)

In Germany, pay-per-click campaigns are growing fast. In fact, I heard from a representative of a new pay-per-click German search engine, QualiGO. With over 13 million German pages gathered in the index since launching earlier this year, it covers German, Swiss, and Austrian sites. Its keyword auction is open to other domains, such as .com, .net, and .org, as long as the site provides relevant content in the German language. It plans to include international domains and foreign-language content in the future.

Spanish and Portuguese Search Sites

Mexico
One major search site to get listed on is Mexico Web, a search engine portal and directory of over 9,000 Mexican Web sites, available in Spanish and English. Mexicochannel.net, a directory of Mexican sites in English, searches a number of databases and offers a host of portal services and search categories. Meta search engine inter.net searches AltaVista, Excite, GoTo, Infoseek, Lycos, Metacrawler, Webcrawler, and Yahoo Popular Mexican portal YupiMSN serves Mexico, Argentina, Columbia, Spain, and the U.S., besides offering Hotmail, YupiMail, and chat. MEXMASTER is a directory of Latin American Web sites covering Spanish-speaking countries worldwide; it’s organized by the usual subject categories and offers portal services. MexSearch is the Mexican yellow pages in English and Spanish.

Spain
You’ll want to get listed on Yahoo Spain, if you can. Terra is also big in Spain, an excellent search portal to be listed on. Another popular directory of Spanish sites with all the usual categories is elmndice. TUSPAIN is a Spanish directory in the English language. Last but not least is UGABULA, a Spanish directory that also offers free Internet access in Spain.

Puerto Rico
All U.S. search engines list Puerto Rican sites. Additionally, WEPA! is a large popular directory with portal services that cover the Caribbean, Central America, and South America and is available both in English and in Spanish.

Brazil
Busca is a popular directory and part of the StarMedia network. The following Portuguese-language search engines and directories of the Brazilian Web also offer email, chat, and portal services, making them advantageous listings for businesses in Brazil: Cadj?, AONDE, VIA NET.WORKS, GuiaWEB.com, brujula.net, and ondeir.com.br.

Chinese Search Engines and Directories

China
Beijing was just awarded the 2008 Olympics and is becoming increasingly more wired. You’ll need to install software that allows processing of Chinese characters, which will be in either Big5 (traditional Chinese) or GB (simplified Chinese) code.

Yahoo China is a good place to start; you can query in traditional Chinese or English. SINA.com is also very popular. Although not a pure search engine, this site targets different Chinese groups worldwide and is popular for daily news and searching. Chinese Databases, from which you can search Chinese or international databases, is in English. Scroll down for a link to list your site or to advertise. ChinaBIG is the Chinese searchable yellow pages, a well-organized site in English. Greater China Web is a directory with searchable Chinese databases on news, statistics, law, business, and so on. The Nihao Directory provides an English and Chinese version of a Yahoo-style subject directory in GB code with links to English search engines Yahoo, AltaVista, Excite, and so on. Chinascape is a subject directory related to Chinese culture. It supports English and Chinese GB code. Excite China seems to be working. It provides keyword searches in traditional and simplified characters, searching Web sites in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore.

Taiwan
Yam.com is a searchable database of Taiwanese Web sites in Big5. Taiwan Infoseek offers, in Big5, much the same content as its U.S. parent.

Site Translations

To be listed on any foreign search engine, you must have a foreign translation of your site and a foreign domain name. Translate at least five to six pages deep, because one or two pages are not enough to be picked up by foreign crawlers.

I had a reader ask me if any of the online translators, such as SYSTRAN, are any good. BabelFish (powered by SYSTRAN) is not bad for a literal translation. But this won’t result in the kind of marketing copy that sells. Not only that, but literal translations can be unintentionally laughable or insulting. And there’s lots to know; for instance, I’m told it’s important not to translate all the Internet-specific words, such as “browser,” “page,” “impression,” and “visit,” because these often remain in English. The best translations are done through local, nonautomated translation services.

TUSPAIN, a Spanish directory (in English), offers a translator’s guide of Spanish-language professionals who can provide “linguistic, communicative, technical and marketing skills to assist business in developing appropriate material for the Spanish and Latin American markets.”

Going Beyond the Language

Site owners also need to think about the marketing demand for their product or service and the prevailing culture, customs, and economic climate of the individual countries in which they want to sell. This is country specific, and proper research will result in trust as people realize you understand their country intimately, beyond a simple page translation.

Just how much market research clients will need to make search engine optimization (SEO) decisions boils down to the type of product or service and the type of site (B2B, business-to-consumer [B2C], publishing). Obviously, B2C sites depend more on local conditions than language alone, whereas B2B sites can rely on clear communications to make it work.

Call for International SEO Expertise

There is a need for SEO experts who can optimize for international search engines in five or more languages. Please contact me (paul2@web-ignite.com) if you offer these services, and I’ll make the information available to the readership.

Optimizing for International Search Engines

English may not be as universal as Americans would like to believe. I read recently that in fact only 47.5 percent of Web users speak English as a primary language. Yet, 56 percent of traffic to U.S. Web sites comes from international visitors.

So what does this have to do with search engine optimization (SEO)? Well, we know that non-English-speaking populations prefer to be addressed in their native languages, even if they understand English. And when it comes to search engines, these people are more likely to use search engines in their own language. So it’s becoming increasingly important to optimize your site for non-U.S. search engines and get listed in the top non-U.S. search engines and directories. That is, if you’re after some of that international traffic.

Fortunately, many people in other countries have learned to search the Internet using American-based engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and Lycos. So you can use regular SEO techniques, adjusting keywords for the various languages in your target market.

The best place to start is with Open Directory Project (ODP), because you can find all sorts of non-American directories there. ODP also has many regional sites, such as those for Germany, France, and Japan.

But you don’t want to ignore the local search engines. They wield a lot more power than we’d like to admit.

The French Connection

For instance, in France, people think of Voila in the way Americans think of Google — as essential (thanks, Dana). Your next best bet is Yahoo France, where the over 147 million French speakers spread over 37 countries can get Mon Yahoo (start page), Yahoo Courrier (email), Yahoo Tchatche (chat), and everything else.

Voila and Yahoo France are the two biggest search sites in France, both offering the usual portal services. A partial list of French search engines can be found here, including MSN France. The French connection is developing at super speed, so there’s a lot of buying power for American products and services. Get listed in France, and translate your site. It will pay off.

German “Engine-ering”

The “in” search engines in Germany are Aladin, Fireball, and WEB.DE, which also provide free email and other services. These are widely used for searches throughout German-speaking areas, including parts of Switzerland.

Many American search engines have German indices, such as AltaVista Germany, Excite Deutschland, Lycos Germany, msn.de, and Yahoo Deutschland, to name a few. A sampling of German search engines is listed here.

Germany and the U.K. dominate Europe in terms of Internet access, with Germany, the U.K., Italy, and France together accounting for two-thirds of European households that are wired with Internet access. Germany reported the greatest increase in the number of households with Internet access in the first quarter of 2001 according to Nielsen//NetRatings (June 2001).

Searching Far (East) and Near

In Japan, you’ll need to optimize for DragonField, goo, and NTT Communications’s OCN. Again, many American search engines have Japanese indices, such as Excite Japan, Google Japan, Lycos Japan, MSN Japan, and Yahoo Japan. You’ll find a list of the top Japanese search engines, and an online Japanese-English dictionary that allows queries to Japanese search engines, here.

One-third of the households in the Asia-Pacific area have Internet access via home PCs. But if you want to reach Japanese consumers, you’ll want to make your site wireless friendly. In Japan, people spend a lot of time commuting on trains from which they like to access the Web and read email on wireless devices. You’ll want to ensure your content is amenable to parsing so the new Web services that parse Web content for mobile phone users can extract vital data, convert it to WML (wireless markup language) and send it to all those commuters and others.

Non-U.S. Search Engines Are Different

Many of the non-U.S. search engine databases are still compiled manually rather than by robot engines and software. So it’s a good idea to hand-submit your site to the leading local search engines. It’s best to use a native speaker for these submissions.

Also be aware that it may take longer for these submissions to get indexed than it does in the U.S., especially now that it’s summer. In Europe, most people are on vacation during the months of July and August. So it could take a while to get listed if you submit during those months.

At present, you won’t find many pay-for-performance search engines like GoTo.com in the non-English-speaking countries. But it probably won’t take long. A pay-per-click search engine, Godado.com, serving Italy, France, and the U.K., launched recently. The network reports that it delivered more than 5 million page views per month, with 600,000 unique visitors in May.

A Couple of Content Optimization Tips

It’s a good idea to invest in software that identifies the country your visitors are coming from, then automatically serves up a home page in that language with a text link to secondary language choices.

Translate at least three to five pages of your site for each non-English-speaking country in your target market. This is both for the convenience of your visitors and for SEO purposes. It used to be that you could get by with translating just one page, but you need more now to get indexed by the robot engines.

Bottom line: With a little extra effort in optimizing your site for international search engines, you can boost traffic and profitability.

New Directions in Optimizing Page Content

Search engine optimization (SEO) is really a process consisting of multiple tasks, and the exact techniques used are sometimes closely guarded secrets. The way I see it, SEO done right should include six major tasks: optimization, submission, registration, positioning, monitoring, and maintenance.

In my last article, I promised to cover, over the coming weeks, the major changes in SEO strategies.

I’ll start by elaborating on current strategies for content optimization. It’s always been important to optimize your page content, but you must do so on two levels.

On one level, you’re trying to gain high rankings in the spider-type engines, such as Google, AltaVista, Lycos, and Excite. On another level, you’re persuading customers to use your products and services. So writing page content requires top copywriting skills as well as up-to-date knowledge of search engine algorithm trends. It also takes a good amount of time, and pages should be updated regularly.

Gone are the days when people would try to outwit search engine algorithms by methods such as repeating keywords within hidden text or with illegal doorway pages. Now, as never before, search engine algorithms are very complex; they differ widely and are constantly changing. In fact, search engines will quickly spot and penalize people who don’t follow their rules.

Although the exact algorithms for each search engine are unknown and are constantly changing, SEO technicians are constantly testing to identify best results. In the past, most algorithms appeared to favor keyword density in various sections of the Web page: the title, the keyword meta tag (if the engine reads meta tags), the first 100 words of Web copy (text), and headlines. The emphasis has moved away from a specific keyword density in favor of what is considered excellent or well-written content. So there’s nothing left to do but to optimize your pages correctly.

For optimizing page content, I recommend paying attention to these subtasks: keyword selection, keyword placement and coding, quality copywriting, site navigation design, and link popularity.

* Keyword selection. Each page of your Web site contains a variety of content on different topics and subtopics. There are specific keywords embedded throughout your page content that can be identified as strategic keywords. Identify one or two phrases or two or more words from each page as your strategic keywords (multiword phrases work much better than single keywords). For brainstorming strategies on how to identify your keywords, read “Finding the Keywords That Will Help Customers Find You” and “Choose Your Words With Care.”

* Keyword placement and coding. Place your keywords in all the HTML tags possible throughout the site, including meta tags. Not all search engines read meta tags, so you want to place keywords in as many other HTML tags as possible, including image Alt tags, !comments tags, and heading tags. But don’t omit meta tags, which can help overcome problems with tables, frames, and other danger areas. Make sure your strategic keywords appear in all critical locations throughout your Web pages. For instance, the page title is critical.

* Quality copywriting. Your strategic keywords must be reflected throughout the copy (especially in the first 100 words) on all your pages. Remember, the spider engines look for HTML text rather than graphics. Some sites like to illustrate large sections of copy with graphics. Though a picture may be worth a thousand words, search engines do not read graphics. The result is that you’ll miss out on making your site more relevant. Beyond that, you need a professional copywriter to produce both keyword-rich and marketing-oriented text. Your customers need kick-ass copy that sells effortlessly, without creating confusion. At the same time, the robot engines need the text-rich information they’re looking for. Only a trained copywriter knows how to satisfy both needs.

* Site navigation design. Some designers create Web sites with image-map links from the home page to the interior pages. Some spiders can’t follow these links and won’t be able to index your interior pages, which may be the most descriptive and relevant pages you want users to find. A good fix for this problem is to add to the home page HTML hyperlinks leading to your most important interior pages or to the major sections of your Web site. You can place these links leading to all your relevant content along the bottom of your home page so that search engines will quickly find them. Another good idea is to create a site-map page with text links to all the important areas within your site. If you follow this option, you can submit this page, ensuring that spider engines locate pages deep within your site.

* Link popularity. Since many search engine algorithms include link popularity as a variable for determining high rankings, you want to get yourself linked to as many quality sites as possible. You can encourage linking by providing a link-instruction page on your site, detailing exactly how you want the links to appear on the linking sites. It can be a simple text link, a graphical link via a button, or a unique URL link. For more details on this linking strategy, see “Easy Linkin’” by Eric Ward. The number of links is subordinate to link quality, because quality content results in high traffic. For instance, a link from Yahoo or Amazon.com is much more important than a link from less popular sites.

So there you have it, the latest strategies for optimizing your site for search engines in 2001. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask, and, as always, I’d love to hear your feedback.

Things Are A-Changin’ in the Search Engine World

A professional, well-organized search engine optimization (SEO) and positioning campaign for the year 2001 to 2002 is looking a wee-bit different from that proposed by the rhetorical top 10 lingo you’ve heard over the past 5 years. We have entered a seller’s market where all portals are doing pay per click, pay for position, or pay per inclusion.

So what does the SEO landscape look like now, and what services should be included in a good search engine positioning (SEP) campaign? In the next series of articles, I’ll explore the many changes that have occurred in the search engine world.

The Essentials

The first thing you want to do is optimize your home page. I’ve written before on how to identify your best keywords. Determine what they are and then write the best keyword-rich text you can for your home page. Don’t forget to place your keywords in all the HTML tags possible, including meta tags. Not all search engines pay attention to meta tags, but there are many other HTML tags you can use.

There’s something else you can do for search engine friendliness: A site map with text links and a “How to Link” page is a simple and effective way to improve your link popularity. My friend, Eric Ward, wrote an excellent article describing how and why you should design such a page.

There are other considerations, such as issues with dynamically driven sites, Java, or frame sets, and the techniques for overcoming these obstacles. I’ve addressed some issues in “Solutions for Dynamic Page Registration.” However, each dynamic site is different; therefore, these issues are almost impossible to solve unless reviewed case by case.

Second, a well-orchestrated dual-submission plan is mandatory — dual in the sense that nowadays we’re dealing with robots such as AltaVista and directories such as LookSmart. Robot engines are significantly different from directories with regard to submission practices:

* Robots require constant re-evaluation and potential resubmission. AltaVista receives more than 1 million page submissions per day. Inktomi offers pay for inclusion (additional fees), requiring specific optimization for Inktomi.

* Directories require hand submission and pay for inclusion. LookSmart offers subsite listings (additional fees), requiring special care regarding category selection. Yahoo requires a home page Business Express fee.

Content Creation or Revision

Content is where it gets tough for SEO companies, because most clients want the cookie-cutter approach; however, you can’t be too careful when representing clients and their content. Therefore, you need a professional copywriter with a general knowledge of the client industry and a flair for writing copy that sells. This requires a mini research project for each individual client, and there’s no way around it; you’ve simply got to provide the best and most professional content in your Web pages, optimized or not.

If you think those logistics are tough, then you’ve got to place this content properly — proper HTML tags along with very good site-management structure:

* Site map

* Contact us

* About us

* Mission statement

* Product pages

This type of client/contractor interaction requires a staging area for the client to review and approve content and optimization. Once approved, the documents can move into a submission area. So, as you can see, the cookie-cutter approach will not work.

There are significant concerns on behalf of the client with regard to content development; likewise, interaction is required between the client and contractor on search engine friendliness. The only way to get the best results is to work together, and this collaboration takes time.

The Infamous Doorway Page

Doorway pages have received a lot of good and bad reviews. A good product page — if you want to call it a doorway, go ahead — is an excellent opportunity to serve a robot engine with the pure facts and deliver the user to a relevant site or offering.

The spoofing days are long gone. Internet Protocol (IP) redirect software simply falls into the hands of too many disingenuous operators who misuse and abuse the technology. IP redirects serve only to red-flag a robot engine of a possible spammer. Professional SEO companies should not utilize IP redirect software.

When a product page designed for a robot engine is viewable and properly submitted, it has a very good chance of being accepted as highly relevant content and can subsequently be found on pages 1 to 5 in the search results. This type of doorway page, when done properly, can also improve your link popularity.

The SEP Consultation

Consultation is another benefit you can receive from a professional search engine positioning (SEP) company. Such services can assist your staff in optimizing your site and are a great way of leveraging SEP know-how and eventually incorporating it into your site. Generally, these consulting contracts run a minimum of 12 months and typically include a retainer and a month-to-month billing cycle.

Some of the additional benefits to come out of consultation include a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis. It is useful to employ SWOT principles when conducting Web site layout and design before optimization, defining specific areas for improvement prior to an SEP campaign launch. Corporate decision-making and analysis tools mesh well with search engine positioning strategies and provide offline corporate customers a framework they are familiar with.

I trust these tactics and strategies will help you in either selecting a search engine positioning company or performing these SEO tasks in-house.