Lost in cyberspace

Playing hide n' seek on the Internet

The majority of people who surf the Internet use search engines, such as Infoseek, Yahoo, Webcrawler, and Excite. Search engines offer perhaps the greatest opportunity to attract visitors to any Web site. Although submitting your Web site to search engines is free, it is time consuming and comes with no guarantee that people will be able to find you when they use a search engine. The continued explosion of Internet use can only lead to increasing difficulty in being located on the Internet.

Companies develop Web sites for a variety of reasons. Some for general information, other develop sites for order taking. What are the benefits of having a company Web site if you're lost in cyberspace? How much has your company already spent developing a Web site? Three thousand, ten thousand, fifty thousand dollars? Wouldn't it be great if more Web users could find your site? have you ever wondered how companies get to be in the top ten of a search engine query? Is it magic? Luck? Or is it from a fee paid by a company to that search engine to ensure being listed first? The answer is...none of the above.

Search engines: a mini test
Let's suppose, I need a new compressor. Being the Internet-savvy person that I am, I log on and visit Infoseek because I like this search engine. I type in the word "compressor" and shazam--over 35,000 pages reference the word "compressor"! How many do you think that I am going to visit? More importantly, how many do you think a potential customer is going to visit? Most people will check the first 4 or 5 or click through the first 2 to 3 pages of references.

Clearly, I need some fine tuning in the search approach. So, I narrow the search to the phrase "rotary screw." Now I find more than 3,000 pages. The same question applies--how many are you going to look at? How many will a potential customer view?

For the record, the second entry of this second search was a manufacturer of rotary screw compressors. Kudos to that company for being #2. Guess who is going to get my call to purchase a compressor? If your Web site is not listed in at least the top 40 references when a user searches using key words and phrases by which you know people refer to you, the result is quite simple: you are lost in cyberspace.

Strategic planning to influence search engines should have started while you were still in the planning phase for your Web site.

Just as you want your Web site to generate more sales, search engines need to catalog more sites to create a larger database. A larger database creates more accurate responses. More accurate responses generates higher usage. Higher usage translates into higher sales of banner ads. Banner ad sales fuel the large revenues needed to finance search engine operating costs and to continue the investment in new software and hardware for their search engine.

Each search engine looks for information in its database differently. In fact, many search engines change the manner in which they look for references weekly. Remember the company that I found was #2 in the "rotary screw compressor" search? I don't know if they
understand how search engines operate or if they are making daily or weekly changes to their site. If they aren't and just got lucky this time around, the next time they could be #65!

Since search engines are in competition with each other, each makes almost daily improvements on the way they operate. Each search engine uses different rules as well. Most companies, including major Web site designers, don't know that there are ways to increase the likelihood of search engines picking their home page first.

But there are several tricks that you can use to influence the search engine results, such as Meta tags, invisible text, and well-worded titles. Before you take this article to your Web page designer, heed this BIG warning--what is acceptable with one search engine can lead to being banned or severely penalized with another. Meta tags, keywords, and descriptions are effective means to influencing search engines. However, if you use Meta tags, your site can suffer in ranking or be purged from the search engine all together. The search engine Excite, for example, no longer supports Meta tags. What works well with one engine, may not work at all with another. If your Web site gets banned from one or several major search engines, imagine the loss of potential business that could be coming from your Web site. You're not just lost at that point, you're in a black hole.

Study the major computer publications and the search engine's own Web site to learn how they operate.

To start increasing your ranking in searches, start by learning more about the major search engines and their enhancements. Study the major computer publications and the search engine's own Web site to learn how they operate. Remember, each of the search engines have varying rules of which you need to be aware and must heed. If you know the rules, the creative ideas on how to increase your ranking should not be a problem.

Search engines require constant attention. They make almost daily improvements that may cause you to lose your position tomorrow, even with constant monitoring. Check your positioning in each major engine at least once or twice a month to help warn of slipping rankings. If necessary, resubmit your site to that search engine.

Although this is not brain surgery in a sense, you may want to consider outsourcing the job to an Internet consulting or Web promotion firm. As you would with any subcontractor, check their track record. Ask them to showcase some of their work for present customers' sites. Checking how well those sites rank with the major search engines should be a good gauge in determining whether they have the understanding to influence search engines. Another BIG warning--improving your ranking requires manipulating the document source. It is almost impossible to increase ranking without making alterations to the document source. If the consulting firm doesn't ask you to give access to your document source, move on.

It's your space
Make no mistake, the Internet is here to stay. More people are getting online everyday. Treat your Web site as an extension of your company, a salesperson who is on the job 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and never calls in sick, never has car trouble, and present your company's products or services through positive publicity, which we all like. Claiming your piece of cyberspace is an important step for any company. The sheer amount of the data available over the Internet is staggering. But with the right steps, you can provide a map to your site everyday and avoid being lost, or worse, losing potential business.