You certainly heard that the magic key to Internet audience for your web site is the visibility in Search Engines. Unfortunately, this is only a small part of the landscape. Out of the small circles of Internet marketing honchos, there are many false stories and true rumours.
If you want to keep your mind clear, here are a few simple messages to store.
ONE search engine
Some weird brains (and a few companies playing with the limits of legality) would like you to believe that your web site must be recorded into the database of hundreds of thousands of search engines in order to increase your chances to Internet fame.
FALSE. About 60% of the search engine market is concentrated into the hands of Google. Thus, you must (manually) register your web site on the web page specially opened by Google for this: Submit your content to Google.
You may choose to do this again and again with other search engines because you use them. Don’t rush! Most of the search egnine actually share a single database and multiple registrations will be fairly useless.
In my not-so-humble opinion, it’s better not to do anything at all after Google. The other search engines will catch up when they want to (and you may want to even forget about Google; More about this later).
One issue to think about: Except if you are a company with a big site (more than a thousand pages) and you need to be sure that inclusion is done quickly in the searhc engine, never accept to pay for your site to be considered. For example, Yahoo! may ask you to pay to accelerate the registration but this will not change to outcome and you can’t even get certainty that your web site will be included in their directory.
NO search engine
Actually, the simplest method is not to go to the search engines, but to convince another web site to point to you. If you want to avoid various kinds of SPAM and other illegal activities, look for a friend with an existing web site, or anybody with a blog and willing to announce the creation of your web site. A link to yours will ensure that ALL search engines will reach your work as quickly as possible. They will find your web site even if you don’t know about the search engine itself.
Don’t go and plug an ugly comment in a blog or in a public forum. You’d take the risk of being banned (for several months to several years).
Du contenu
However, last but not least, don’t worry too much about the search engines before you get several tens of pages active on your web site. Google and the other search engine look for actual content and would rank you as a non-descript microbe among the 200 million other wbe sites present today on the Internet.
Yes! The only good advice is “write good content”. The rest is of no importance:
- Text with useful information (For you, for the others; Today or tomorrow; Etc.)
- Images (with some textual comments for easier identification)
- Sound
- Videos
- Whatever you want
Welcome in the world of Internet publishing!
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