Search Engine/Directory Overview

The Internet may appear to be a visual medium, but it is indexed textually. The biggest problem websites have with search engines is a failure to understand what the search engines are going to do with each page from a website. Search engines and directories are the two major types of Internet search services. It is important to understand them and the fundamental difference between the two. Search engines are indexes that are automatically assembled with the help of software programs called spiders or robots that "spider" or "crawl" the Internet to find pages. Search engine software, not a person, decides whether to include a page or not. People assemble directories-directories are collections of links to websites compiled by people, not software robots.

Making a website visible to search engines and directories takes planning and time. With regards to planning, we will recommend URL changes (if necessary), copy/content changes (where needed), title, alt-image, keyword and description tags that are relevant to the content from key pages within your website. Additionally, we will recommend the creation of a crawler page and/or doorway pages and assist in the development of the pages. Once this process is completed the process of submission begins.

Almost all of your traffic will come from the major search engines and directories. Consider these statistics: Over 95% of Web users find what they are looking for by visiting the top 6 search engines. Research has shown that it is very rare for Web users to go past the top 30 search results for any one search. The top 10 results receive 78% more traffic than those in position 11 through 30 do. The top 30 results get over 90% of the search traffic. This alone explains why some websites do so well and others so disappointingly, and why it is so critical to be ranked highly.

Consider this example:

Whenever the typical Web user needs to find something on the Internet, he/she will almost always instinctively go to one of the top search engines and submit a search. Then, he/she will have a look at the first 30 results returned (usually the first 3 pages of results), rarely ever looking beyond that. If nothing looks appealing, he/she will run another search using a variation of the keywords they used on the first search. Again, he/she will look at the first 30 results. If he/she finds nothing of interest, they may switch to a different search engine and repeat the process or they re-word their search. This is the typical search behavior of at least 86% of all Internet users!

The following table illustrates how and from where the major search engines derive their results:

Click here to view the chart

Click here to inquire about Zunch's search engine marketing services.

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