A Practical Guide To Websites For Small Local Businesses

How To Get Customers To Find You

Part 1 - Search Engines

Until your website is listed in the search engines, it is pretty much invisible as far as the internet is concerned. You will probably find that the majority of visitors find your site from the search engines.

Let me warn you about something. You will find websites that say things like "Submit your site to 8,000 search engines with the click of one button!" Don't bother wasting your time. Here's why:

There are 7 major search engines that are responsible for 90% of all searches. Each has their own submission guidelines, so to get a good listing you will want to hand submit to each one separately. Or you can spend $100.00 or more for software - such as Web Position Gold - that automates the process in a way that imitates hand submission. (This kind of software is built into SiteBuildIt at no extra charge.)

At the time I am writing this, the 7 major search engines are:

• AllTheWeb.com (FAST)
• Ask Jeeves
• Google
• Inktomi
• MSN
• Open Directory
• Yahoo!

All of the other search engines (including AOL, HotBot, Netscape, etc.) get some or all of their listings from one or a combination of the above sources.

If you've never heard of Inktomi that's because it is not a search engine that you or I can use. Inktomi only provides search results for other search engines.

Open Directory and Yahoo! are not technically search engines - they are directories. What's the difference? Directories are put together by human editors. Search engines use computers to find and list web pages.

The search engines try to include every site they can find (they are comprehensive). The directories want to provide searchers with the best possible sites (they are exclusive).

Because the directories are picky, you must submit to them by hand even if you are using SiteBuildIt or Web Position Gold.

Yahoo! ( http://yahoo.com ) is the largest and most famous of the directories. They charge $299.00 to review your site with no guarantee that you will be accepted! You then pay $299.00 a year to keep your site listed. This is worth it for some online businesses because of the world-wide traffic that Yahoo! can bring them. In your case, however, this would be a waste of money - you are looking for local customers, not world wide customers.

Open Directory ( http://dmoz.org ) is the only free directory at this time. Getting your site listed is definitely worthwhile because several popular search engines (AOL, Hotbot, Lycos and Netscape) draw from their database for search results. To submit your site go to http://dmoz.org/add.html and follow the directions. Be aware that the volunteer editors are kept pretty busy, so it may take 4 to 8 weeks for your site to get listed.

The search engines are constantly changing, so much of this information may be outdated by the time you read this. For the most up to date information go to http://searchenginewatch.com.

(If you are using SiteBuildIt there is no need to worry about the ins and outs of search engines. The SBI staff keeps the software updated for you. Aside from hand submitting to Open Directory - and Yahoo! if you wish - everything else is fully automated. For more information about SBI go to http://sbi.3-18.com.)