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Everybody wants to be #1 in the search engine results. Well, there is only one #1 position for any particular searched-for keyword or phrase, and there are more than an estimated 15,000,000 web sites. Your web site is probably not going to be #1 in the search results, and maybe not even in the first several pages of search results.

Depending on the particular search engine, it can take from a few hours to as long as several months before your web site will appear in the search results, after your site has been accepted and then spidered and then indexed by the search engine.

Most of the more than estimated 3,000 search engines are independently owned and operated. Here is a small listing of some of the search engines. Most of them have their own rules, procedures, site ranking methods, inclusion standards, etc. Some search engine “experts” say that the top search engines consider more than 150 aspects of a web site when calculating the site’s ranking.

To get listed in the search results, you can submit your web site to each search engine, usually for free. If manually submitting your site to each search engine is more than you care to do, then you can hire a submission service to do it for you. But, if you use my web hosting service, a free web site submission service is already available in your vDeck Control Panel.

But before you submit your site to a search engine, make sure it is ready for the search engines to maximize your site’s ranking and position in the list of search results.

• No irrelevant content on your pages.
• META tags of at least title, keywords, and description, and that are relevant to the content of your site.
• Use your description and keywords in the body of your page(s)
• Have a navigation system OTHER THAN (or in addition to) JavaScript or JAVA or FLASH, so the spider can find and get to each of the pages in your site.
• No "coming soon" or "under construction" pages.
• No dead links.

Some of the things that can (but are not guaranteed to) increase your site’s ranking and position in the search results are:

• Having links TO your site from other sites that offer a product or service that goes along with yours, but does not compete with yours. If you sell boats, then links from places that sell boat motors or fishing poles would be good. Links from a place that also sells boats would be not so good.

Of course, if other sites link to your site, then out of courtesy, you should have links on your site back to them. But links back to those sites will take potential customers away from your site.

• Having content that is relevant to your site. If you sell baby blankets, don't talk about car tires.
• The number of people that have found your site in the search engine results AND clicked on the link to your site. There is very little that you can do about this.
• How long your site has been listed with that search engine. Time will tell.

Some search engines might consider your domain name expiration date as an indicator as to how "sincere" you are in having a web site presence. A lot of hit-and-run web sites have a domain name registered for only a year. If you are in it for the long term, make sure that your domain name is registered for at least 2 years, and you might get a higher site ranking.

Many of the domain name registration companies offer bulk prices if you order more than some specific number of domain names at the same time. Why would they have “bulk” pricing? Many people or companies or organizations will buy ten or a hundred or a thousand or more domain names, then either make a web site for each one, or point most of those names to just a few web sites. Each of those web sites would be selling essentially the same product or service. If you happen to be offering the same product or service as these mass sites, then your site will be listed in the search results somewhere among all those other names/sites. What are the chances of someone clicking on your one web site instead of one of the many others? Also consider, when was the last time you did a search, and looked beyond the first few pages of results? If they have 200 sites listed and you have one, what are the chances of your site being listed in those first few pages?

The point of this page is that if you will be depending on people going to your web site solely as the result of them finding your web site in the search engines, you are doomed.

revised: March 22, 2007

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