Taking Advantage of Search Engines

Search engines are the #1 way to find what you're looking for on the Internet.  Although they are very powerful, search engines do not instantly index every Web site out there the second it is created.  There are a few different ways search engines build their indexes, and there are several ways to make your site known to search engines, which may open your site to millions more.

How Search Engines find and rank Web sites
Search Engines, generally, use one of two methods to build their database index of Web sites.

1. Send out "crawlers" or "spiders" which scan through web sites and check them for certain attributes which affect the rank of that site. These crawlers will eventually get to every Web site out there, but there are some things you can do to speed up the process for your Web site.
2. Use human crawlers to check the content of a Web site and rank it.  This method is generally used to supplement the job of automatic spiders, and is rarely used as the only method for a search engine (for example, MSN uses both human content checkers, and spiders to build its search database).

This is why when your site becomes live; it may not be in a search engine database for 30 days or more.  There are certain things search engines look for that can affect the rank of your web site.  Although this may not be a concern of most WebMedley sites, but the rank of your site affects how high in the list of search results your Web site will appear.  This is why when you do a search on "horseback riding"; the most relevant site will be at the top of the list.

Optimizing your site for Search Engines
Short of paying a large fee to put your Web site at the top of any search engine's list, here are some things you can do which will make sure your site will be listed and ranked as high as possible for no money at all.

Putting some key words in the "key word Meta Tag" field in WebMedley may help when a search engine "spider" comes through your site.  It will associate words in that field with your Web site, increasing the chance of someone finding your site when they search on those key words. 

What also will help, is putting keywords in the title field of your page.  Using key words in the title and the body of your page will "convince" a search engine that your Web site actually is about what those key words describe.  For example: Instead of using "Contact Us" as the title of a page, use "How To Contact The WebMedley Support Team".  This is much more descriptive and will help associate that topic with your Web page. 

Finally, one of the biggest things that will help your site be found in search engines is hyperlinks.  The more links to your Web site the better.  If there are other organizations that share the same mission as you, have them put a link to your Web site on their site.  Doing this will drastically increase the amount of ways someone can get to your site, which in turn increases the search capability.  Also, having your Website linked to its own pages will help.  Fortunately WebMedley already does this for you using the dynamic navigation.  Having every page linked to each other will make your site very accessible no matter which page you start on. 

For more information on Search Engines, or to find out how to register with them visit Search Engine Watch.com