i-Search Engines

The old mantra "The more links the better" doesn't hold as much water as it used to. It may have worked earlier, when the Internet was more manageable. In keeping with an ever growing Internet and increasing misuse of link exchanges, search engines have now adopted different, varying criteria for ranking web sites.

Most sites employ DHTML, Flash, Frames and other fancy objects to enhance the end user's experience. While these objects are great to captivate the users attention, Google and other search engines can't understand them and will have trouble interpreting them while crawling your sites. Google introduced a new concept called Site Maps. Most people overlook the power of this feature. The Site Maps feature allows Google to understand your site structure and diagnose any potential problems.

As we noted in the first section, PageRank is a value that Google gives to a page based on the number of links pointing to your site. So how do you get others to provide links to your site? You can try the following methods:

* Register with major search directories (Yahoo!, OpenDirectory, MSN)

* Send press releases about your product or idea that generates free links

* Hire an expert to write something positive about your product and publish in an industry newsletter, magazine or a local newspaper

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it "ranks", the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

Search engine link building will increase your PR but you need to be careful when you do this. Some link building sites will actually damage your PR. You need to get quality links from websites that are well established and have a good PR themselves. Good links to your site tell the search engines that there is valuable information on your site and will rank you better for it.