Advanced e-commerce resources :: Miva Merchant Hosting :: oscommerce

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Marketing / SEO

Q: What is Search Engine?

A: A Search Engine is a tool that enables users to locate information on the World Wide Web. Search engines use keywords entered by users to find Web sites which contain the information sought. Some search engines are specifically designed to find Web sites intended for children.

Q: What is the difference between search engines and directories?

A: An Internet search engine, like Google, uses a program which reads the text in your web site and creates an index. Search engine users can then find the site by typing search words and phrases which the search engine looks up in its index and retrieves the corresponding web pages.

An Internet directory, like the Yahoo Directory, uses human editors to place your web site into a directory or outline of topics so that users can find the site by selecting the appropriate category.

The goal of either is to help their users find web pages with the content they want.

Q: What are doorway pages?

A: A doorway page is a webpage designed to rank well on a specific search engine for a specific keyword phrase. These pages usually rely on frequent repetition of the keyword phrase, and often try to "trick" search engines into ranking them well.

Q: None of the engines are indexing my site, why?

A: 1. You may not have allowed enough time for the engine to index your site. The indexing time for most engines is between two days and six weeks, if they are operating normally.

2. Some engines have several databases they pull results from. Therefore you may be listed in one that the engine isn't pulling from at the moment you do your search.

3. Frames. If you use frames on your pages, some engines cannot index frame properly.

4. They simply "lost" the url that was submitted. Sounds ridiculous but happens more often than you think.

5. Hosted on a free site. Some engines will not index pages from free sites.

6. Anything that can be considered spamming technique. If an engine suspects any type of spamming they will may not index your page or ban your site entirely.

7. If your website is hosted on a server containing illegal adult content, and that site is on the black list of Google your website could be banned.

8. If your website is utilizing a shared IP address. All Advanced Hosting plans come with a dedicated IP address for free. Some cheap web hosts do not offer static IPs. If your website is being hosted by a provider that does not offer dedicated IP addresses, your website rankings could be penalized.

Q: What are Meta Tags?

A:
Meta tags for your "title", "description", and "keywords".

your keywords here">

your description here ">

<title> your title here </title>

A Title (with a high percentage of your site's keywords, and a title that starts with an "A" is best because some search engines sort alphabetically). A Description (with a high percentage of your site's keywords)

Keywords (to see someone's keywords, while viewing a web site, click "view" "source". Then you can see what keywords they are using (who they are targeting).

For fun, go to your competitors web sites, and click "view " then click "source" (Netscape calls it "page source".) You will be looking for something that says "Meta keywords".

After your website is designed, it needs to be "submitted" to the top search engines (Yahoo, Excite, Lycos, Altavista, HotBot...there are hundreds of them.) The majority of them charge NOTHING for you to submit a site to them. The best place to begin submitting your site is Yahoo.com. After you submit your web site there, search for "search engines" and begins submitting your site at other search engines. Advanced Hosting's sister company Advanced Web can assist you in getting this done.