For the same reason you need a card catalog in a library. There is lots of great and useful information in a library, but it’s physically impossible to examine all the books personally. Not even the most indefatigable web-surfer could hyperlink to all the documents in the aptly named World Wide Web. There are billions of pages on the Web. And every minute of the day, folks are posting more.
Q. If it’s impossible to examine all the documents on the Web, how do the search engines do it?
A. They use software programs known as robots, spiders or crawlers. A robot is a piece of software that automatically follows hyperlinks from one document to the next around the Web. When a robot discovers a new site, it sends information back to its main site to be indexed. Because Web documents are one of the least static forms of publishing (i.e., they change a lot), robots also update previously cataloged sites. How quickly and comprehensively they carry out these tasks varies from one search engine to the next.
Think of a Web search engine as an index that enables you to seek out specific words and phrases. With the search engine’s help, you can locate individual appearances of such words in documents all over the Web.
This can be both a blessing and a curse–but it’s more commonly the latter! You are likely to get far too many hits. Or you might discover that your keyword has meanings you didn’t anticipate. Rarely, you might get no hits at all.
Google is thorough and fast. Its technology considers pages that are linked from many other sites to be more important than pages that only have a few links from other sites. In other words, if many webmasters consider a website valuable enough to create a link to it, Google considers that a good reason to justify a high ranking for that site.
Q. How can I get a higher search engine ranking for my website?
A. It used to be true that if you posted a page on the Web, sooner or later the search engines would find it and index it.
To some extent, this may still be true. But as the Web has exploded in size, it’s obvious that less and less of it is actually being found and indexed by search engines. Now SurfYourName.com has to be more proactive than ever before about getting listed by search engines and directories. In many cases, this means that you have to pay a fee to get listed; but all of this is included in your marketing plan with SurfYourName.com
Most of the popular Web search engines still provide a way for you to add your own URL. Sometimes this is obvious on their initial page; other times you have to drill down into the site to find out where and how to do this.
Beware, if you hire someone who uses unscrupulous tactics to try to “Spam the search engines.” This could result in your site getting banned from search engine indices. Surf Your Name manages over 100 different clients websites and have a vast amount of experience when it comes to search engine strategy.
The best way to get people to find your site is to provide useful, well-organized, well-written, well-designed information. The more folks who find your site and link to it, or send around the URL to their friends, the more visitors you’ll have. Word of mouth (actually, word of email) is very powerful on the Web! Call 910-452-6345 to speak to one of our marketing specialists about putting your website to work for you!
To some extent, this may still be true. But as the Web has exploded in size, it’s obvious that less and less of it is actually being found and indexed by search engines. Now SurfYourName.com has to be more proactive than ever before about getting listed by search engines and directories. In many cases, this means that you have to pay a fee to get listed; but all of this is included in your marketing plan with SurfYourName.com
