Search engines and directories can be very important when it comes to plastic surgeon web site promotion. The Internet is enormous, containing millions of websites with even more being added daily. It’s easy for a website to go unnoticed and get lost in the crowd. An excellent way to get noticed is to promote your website to search engines and directories.
There are many search engines out there, including Google, Yahoo, AskJeeves, MSN, Lycos, Altavista, Excite, HotBot, and more. Search engines are comprised of a searchable database of individual web pages with the goal of including every website on the Internet. Spiders are automated programs used by the search engines to crawl the Internet and index web pages. Different search engines use different algorithms to rank web pages, which can include factors like the use of keywords and the number and quality of inbound links. When a person conducts a search on a search engine, the search engine returns results according to how they’ve ranked them.
There are also many different directories, including Yahoo, LookSmart, Open Directory and AOL. A directory is more like a library with information categorized by section. When a user conducts a search, they are directed to a particular category based on that search. Unlike the search engines, directories use actual human editors to first review a site before categorizing it and including it in the directory, which can provide users with better quality content. Unfortunately, this information can also become outdated as sites are typically reviewed just once. The distinction between search engines and directories is becoming less clear, with many search engines now also offering directories.
An entire industry has grown around the desire to gain high rankings in search engines, known as search engine optimization (SEO). Good search engine rankings are achieved through a lot of effort, careful preparation of pages, and attention to coding. Every search engine uses different algorithms to determine their rankings, but there are some similarities. Importance is given to HTML and META tags, use of keywords and their relevance to content, and links. Other things like graphics, images and JavaScript are of no importance to the search engines, unless they’re being used in a way as to hurt your rankings. Both the title tag and meta tag must be meaningful and include keywords. While you want to use a lot of keywords, you also don’t want your tags to appear overly repetitious as this can actually hurt your rankings.
Those techniques used in SEO don’t work with the directories. Good content is essential to high rankings in both, but directories also require good visual appeal. A short description of your site is submitted to the directory, after which your site is then reviewed by an editor. Because of this, you must take care with how you describe your website. Other than that, there are no easy ways to get good ranking is directories given that they’re subject to human review. Your best bet is to ensure that your website offers good content and attractive pages.