Google and other major search engines use a piece of software called a spider or a crawler to visit a web page, read it, and then follow links to other pages within the site. This is what it means when someone refers to a site being "spidered" or "crawled.” The spider returns to the site on a regular basis, such as every month or two, to look for changes. Everything the spider finds goes into an index of the web site that the search engine can quickly use to display a list of links for a specific search. Because there are lots of web sites out there, it can take a while for new pages or changes to make it into the search engine’s database.

Making Your Site Attractive To Search Engines

What makes your site attractive to search engines? What tells people to click on your link as opposed to a competitor’s link? The number one answer for both of these questions is how relevant your site appears to the person searching.

Search engines make judgments about a web page's subject and relevance to your search using tactics such as:

• Back-linking: (The number of sites that link to you and the content on those sites.) Develop associations and cross linking with those associations, as well as other web sites in your industry.

• Word distance: (The separation on your site of relevant words in a search string.) Make sure that the words “home” and “inspection” are next to each other and near the top of the page.
• Word density: (The number of times a keyword is used in the site.) Make sure to mention “home inspection” and your inspection coverage area more than once.
• Meta data: Although meta data is not as weighted as heavily as it once was, information in the <META> HTML tags are still used in search engine rankings.
• Sitemaps: A sitemap is a file that shows the structure of your site in a computer-readable, industry-recognized standard. Search engines use the sitemap file to confirm other settings in your site, as well as have a defined structure for their spiders to use as they view your site. The Platinum Builder generates your sitemap automatically anytime you make a change to your site, so rest assured you are taking advantage of this powerful tool .

A very important step with your site is to pick your target keywords and site description. The keywords are the search phrases you want to be listed under, and the description is a brief paragraph about your company.

Putting It All Together

Much of this is very similar to how you or I would visually scan a web page and make a quick judgment on what the site is about. Images are also important, as accurate and descriptive naming of images can increase ranking on both the Image searches and the normal text searches. Since search engines can't process information in the exactly the same way as people, they use the above criteria (and other, constantly changing methods) to rank pages.

You can use the Submit Your Site To: links in the Platinum Builder to submit your website to the search engines automatically for your site to be indexed, crawled and listed. Do not add the site until it is done and your keywords are ready.

What Not To Do

There are a lot of Search Engine Optimization companies that employ “smoke and mirror” tactics that possibly help to move your site higher up in the search results. Some of these services claim they will guarantee that you will be at the top of the search results. However, they often leave out the part about what specific search words need to be entered to get that result. Being number one in the search results is not important if the “search” term used is your company name, like “Smithers Home Inspections” or something else very specific.

This is not to say that all SEO companies are crooked or a waste of money, but there are many scammers and spammers on the Internet that claim to produce great results while hurting your search results with their changes to your site. There are also reliable SEO companies out there, one should just be cautious when evaluating them.

While the Platinum Web Services Site Builder does not have many options for an SEO company manage the content beyond our already flexible tools, if you insist on using an SEO company you can still host your site through the Platinum Web Service and take advantage of our other services.

All of the above hints and tips relate to getting listed high in the “natural” search engine results. The natural search engine results are, of course, important for the long term health of your company’s online status and are free as well. But there is a second set of search engine results, and many people do not realize the difference between the two. If you look closely at a set of search engine results, you will normally see a set of results that are in a slightly different color or font. This is paid search placement and a great thing about this is that you can use this technique to get your way to the top very quickly. The other main benefit of search engine advertising is that you are directly dealing with the search engine and not a third-party vendor of a service.

Most search engine advertising structures allow you to start an account with a minimum investment of about $5.00, and you can even set a limit for how much you will spend in a single day. Currently, the two biggest search engines are Google and Yahoo. MSN is working on their own search terms service, but it is limited to relatively few customers.

When signing up for the paid search results, you select which keywords you want to use and how much you are willing to pay for clicks on those words. The more you are willing to pay per click, the higher you will appear in the search results.

The price you select for the pay per click is what dictates your final position in the search results for that search phrase. The more you pay, the higher up you will be in the search results for that particular phrase. Most localized searches have a relatively low PPC value because there is not as much competition, which will make it easy for you to appear at the top on these very focused searches. If you can get someone to come to your site when they are searching for "Miami home inspector", and you do home inspections in the Miami area, you have certainly gotten your money's worth.

Now that you have a web site and know the facts about advertising, it's time to sign-up for an account with one of these search engines and get started!