search engine

Here is how to visit the Google Seach Engine Site in your local domain. [click to continue...]

I have recently found 2 ways to generate a lot of traffic to my client sites, both related to foreign languages. My sites are not “Make Money on the Internet” or “Lose Weight” sits, but international business and small business target audience. Having said that, people in foreign countries need to lose weight and want to make money on the internet just like anyone else.

Yesterday I had a person land on my clients page after having done a search on Google Canada with the results page in Korean. The person did a search related to my clients keywords and we were 4th on the results page. I did the exact same search in the US Google and we were not in the first 100.

Not oddly, over the last month I see a lot of foreign search arrive on our site the same way, common keywords searched in foreign language Google pages.

I wrote a series of articles on how to get your site listed on foreign language search engines. Not Google in a different country, but Yandex, Baidu, Pathfinder and other names that you may have never heard.

These search engines want pages in their language. I don’t speak Russian (but I made a page describing my clients services in Russian). I don’t read Chinese, Greek or German either, but I have pages in those languages and my client has clients based on those searches.

How to do this.
Go to translate.google.com and translate your page into all of the languages available. Make posts on your site or blog with all of these languages. If you have a blog and don’t want the posts on page one - this can cause confusion - then use the time stamp and post them last week. The posts still get spidered.

Once translated, submit the foreign language pages to the foreign search engines. This will make the search engines assume that you have a lot of data in whatever language you post. Google then searches the foreign search engines (they actually do this) and when Google takes data from Pathfinder they assume that everything on the site in question could be in that language, and moves you high on the Google SERP.

Once done I go to Stumbleupon and other similar media. submit your sites - but only on places that will call out your language selection. This also calls out your site as possibly having results in the foreign language to Google.

Nutshell
* Select one page that offers your products or services. Not a long page.
* Translate and post one page in your foreign language of choice.
* Submit to foreign search engines.
* If you have the guts, go to blogs in that foreign language and post replies using the google translation tool. Specify that you are using the translation tool; also include your reply in English. On the URL line, link back to your foreign language page.

Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in the result pages for searches made by internauts. According to the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (way back when), SEM methods include:

• search engine optimization (or SEO)
• paid advertisement
• paid inclusion.

These days Search engine marketing includes creating HubPages, squidoo lens, uploading files to scribd, article submission with links back to your primary sales site, blog entries, audio and video submissions and so many more.

Paid search advertising has many controversies about it, especially since sites like Baidu and Yandex (both with more daily searches than MSN) like to include paid links and natural links in the same results. By some standards this is not an appropriate practice, but one country can not force its standards on the world, so this is going to stay. Rumor on the street says that Google will be including a mix of SERP’s with a mix of primarily natural results with advertised sites added in and not marked as such.

Search engine marketing is a topic that can be studied for months and still be a total waste of time. By the time you learn the tricks that are working - they no longer work. Each person should make the effort to find what works for them and use that method until it stops working.

It is easy to get a web site in the top 10 listing on Google, or at least I have done it for my clients over the last 6 months. Time for my method to stop working, so I am out trying new things - knowing that day will come.

Once a site is in a search engine, the search engine’s spider will revisit it and rebuild their index with the changed parts of the site. Some like to think that the spider will hit every page, but choose a very active site and look at the cached pages in the search engines and the cache dates will not be the same. A good way to encourage the search engines to hit every page it to make your site map be obvious on the site and if you can, use the sitemap that is generated by your search engine of preference. Given the choice between hoping the spider finds your cool little trick and staying with something that works - well I advise you stick with things that work.

Search engines were developed by people that know the changing (there, it just changed), so the search engines are always doing there thing with web pages. You will see a page move up, down and sometimes unexplainably vanish for different lengths of time. Although I have not experienced it personally, I have read of 2 people on different side of the US that searched a site and found it on 2 different positions of the search engine results page. This is because there is not just one server with page rank information and while one is updated right now, another will be updated in 30 minutes (Hey, there it goes again, the internet just changed).

In days of old, people were told to submit their domain to the search engines, but the search engines move so fast that a site just needs to be entered on any social media site and it will be spidered right away. I keep one video that is watched between 2000 and 4000 times a day just so I can plug in a domain name that I want spidered. So not only will every engine probably find your site on its own the first time, it will keep visiting it on its own - as long as you keep the site fresh. Update you site or the spider will stop coming to visit.

The major search engines appear to visit most pages in its database at least once a month. If a site I am working on is not spidered weekly, there is something wrong. Some pages get visited every day and a good objective for your site is to have enough content coming in that the search engines have reason to visit daily. Sites with a higher PageRank do get spidered more often than sites with a low PR. And sites which update more frequently get spidered more often than sites which does not have updates - and there is nothing wrong with an archive site that never updates.

If you have a Wordpress blog there is a tool built in that notifies the major search engines each time you make an update, it is called a PING tool. You can try to get spidered more often by updating your pages often. Minor changes are still changes, you don’t have to rewrite the site every day. There are disadvantages to changing your site daily - the first being you run the risk of human error. Make a mistake because you are making a change and you can take your site down, not a good idea.

Internet user demographics are ever changing. More users are coming on the internet from more countries. Everyone needs to keep their website visible to as many internet users as possible if you are interested in new clients. It may be time to change some of your practices. When registering your company with online directories, it seems like most of the world relies solely on being referenced by Google.

Let’s take a closer look below at how well Google searches fare in two of the world’s largest markets. Remember if Google is not penetrating well into a foreign market, then your website will not be found in that market.

In China, Google has a 27% market share; but the local language search engine Baidu has a full 55%. Similarly, in Russia, Google is in a distant third place, with Yandex the leader and another Russian player - Rambler - holding second. Google holds only a 17% market share in Russia - behind two Russian Language sites that control nearly 75% of that market. In addition to the 140 million Russians, there are an additional 145 million people that speak Russian worldwide.More than 50% of growth in internet users from 2007-2010 is likely to come from China, Russia and India which are behind western Europe and North America - please note that these countries have more than 40% of the worlds population. It is probably time to find out how to get your site listed on these search engines.

Chinese and Russian Population & Internet Numbers

215 million Americans have internet access at present. There are 162 million from China and 60 million from India. The total Chinese and Indian users added together equals the number of users in the US. But this does not take the total populations of these countries into account. There are more than 2 billion other Chinese and Indians that are not yet on the internet.

China is the world’s most populated country, nearly 1.4 Billion people. Russia has the largest population in Europe, larger than Germany and France combined. Russia and China each have one of the world’s fastest growing economies.

Internet penetration in Russia currently stands at about 20% - half the European average and less than a third of the 69.9% in the United States.

In China, penetration is just 12.5% (so there are a BILLION future clients that are not on the internet yet). When China reaches the worldwide average for internet penetration of 20% they will have passed the number of American internet users.

The penetration levels in Western Europe and North America appear to have stabilized and look unlikely to grow significantly in the future. As an example, Internet penetration is 55% and 65% of the French and German populations.

The majority of new world-wide internet users is expected to come from China and India. Their present internet user penetration is only 12.5% and 5% respectively. The bulk of new European users is expected to be from Russia, the Ukraine and Turkey.

It is estimated that in less then 2 years China will pass the United States as the biggest internet community online.

Is Google up to the Challenge

It is time for an interesting question. Have Google and Microsoft reached their search engine plateau? Are they about to begin the decline in worldwide search engine dominance? Most of the estimations place Google at more than 70% of the present market share world-wide.

What will be their global market share in five years time? Even if Google’s market share grows in Russia and China their overall world share may fall because of the increase in foreign script searches and the increased value of local language search engines.

Yahoo! is not mentioned here as word on the street says Microsoft wants to acquire them. Yahoo! has been on a decline for the last several years.

Get Better Ranks In Russia

And Here are a few pointers if you want to go beyond Google to get better search engine rankings for your website in Russia and China.

The current Russian search engine leader is Yandex. Yandex does not accept site submissions from sites hosted outside of Russia. This does not mean, however, that domain names have to be from the former Soviet Union (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan). They do have to be hosted with an IP address from a Russian speaking country OR with pages in Russian. By chance, Yandex offers free hosting services, so starting a Russian language site is not as hard as it may see.

Sites are indexed quicker if it is significantly linked to by sites hosted in Russia and Russian language sites, similar to the Google algorithm that gives greater value to a link to your site if the linker is in your field. You will need to read Russian to find out how to upload a site on Yandex

In China the leader is Baidu. Unlike Google, Baidu has merged all of their search results together - organic and paid. Even if this site is in Chinese you can still easily figure it out how to submit your site if you would like to give it a try; just mouse over links until you find one that has a link to submit.

Probably the best way to be a top 10 player in the Baidu SERP’s is to pay. Capitalism is alive and well in China, and with a billion future clients it may be worth your while. They do advertise Pay for Performance (P4P) and they tailor advertising solutions.

To be honest, the best way to be on the Google or Yahoo Front page is also by advertising. To improve user experience, Baidu has introduced “phonetic” or “pin-yin” search which allows users to type in Chinese keywords using English alphabets.

To rank well organically, you must first realize that the Chinese search audience is very Chinese oriented. Your landing page must be fully in Chinese and presented in the Chinese style. Similar issues arise in other countries; a Japanese website written and designed by a Texan will not be accepted in Japan.

So, plan on hiring a Chinese team to include a native marketing professional or copywriter - not a translator - and a graphic artist. These folks should be born and raised in mainland China, not American of Chinese origins. The Baidu site states that the Simplified Chinese language is their language of choice so do not be concerned (yet) about the multiple languages available for your Chinese website.

Like all search engines, Baidu does not guarantee your site will be crawled. Like all search engines, once listed on Baidu, you can improve your position by providing high quality content that you regularly keep up to date. Your Chinese site must have inbound links from other Chinese websites.

On a side note, the literal translation of the word Baidu is “hundreds of times” and represents persistent search for the ideal. Yandex is explained as “Yet Another iNDEXer”.

Get Your Website Submitted To The Leading Search Engines In Every Country

Should you be concerned about where your website is listed?

Online companies need to follow their internet user markets. They need to ensure their website is submitted and listed in all of the leading search engine directories in each of the appropriate countries.

By keeping track of your international visitors you will be able to prioritize countries. But internet user demographics is expected to change rapidly and you should look at prioritizing countries based these results.

Start a search engine submission strategy to get your website listed in all of the leading directories in each country.

KeyWords and KeyWord Phrases are words that people will type into a search engine that YOU or YOUR PRODUCT is the answer to. When people type “Body Language”, Kevin Hogan wants to be the answer, but his site only appears at the bottom of a 100 entry list. There are over 2.1 million entries for “Body Language” (and 1.5 billion for ‘internet’). When someone enters SEO Copywriting, there are hundreds of people that want to be in the top 10, but there are only 10 sites listed.

In the beginning, keywords were not visible to the reader; they were only in the HTML script. Then people realized that in the algorithm the quantity of keywords counted. Because of this you would have pages with white text on a white background, the same word added as a comment in the HTML text (so only the spider could see it) or the same word written 300 times at the bottom of the page. These words were for the search engine spiders.

Today the tricks listed above not only don’t work; in fact the opposite - they would get your site banned from the search engines because the algorithm has changed. Today the search engines want your keywords to be used logically and where they fit. Each page should have a title (you would be surprised how many sites have all of their pages untitled). Since you are able to use a title, and each page has a KeyWord, use that KeyWord as the page title.

The “Body Language” page from Kevin Hogans’s site has this title string - . Not only does he use “Body Language” twice, he uses other words people may use to search for this topic; “Reading Body Language”, “Decoding Body Language” and “Body Language Analysis”.

After a user searches on a set of keywords on her search engine of choice, she is presented with a page called the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) which has sponsored links (at the top of the page and to the right) and a main section of the page with the listing that are found based on the algorithm used. This set of listing is called the organic or natural listings. Organic search engine optimization (this training) is about increasing the number of times the search engines spider your site, moving your site higher on the SERP, both of which should help increase the amount of visitors that your site gets.

This is achieved by getting more documents indexed on the search engine and by attaining a higher position in the organic results. The problem for many marketers and traditional advertising agencies lies in the technical nature of search engines and the difficulty in understanding the underlying algorithms that produce the rankings for particular keyword searches.

The most popular search engine is Google which accounts for the greatest number of search requests. This is not to say that other search engines are not important nor anything about the different algorithm’s being used. Google’s success has ensured that many search engines are moving in the same direction and since Google has filed their search patent we do not have to rely on as much guesswork.

Importantly, Google ensures that there is a level of feedback from users through the Google toolbar that enables Google to refine their search results over time. Also, a significant part of Google’s algorithm is to protect its search engine against search SPAM which is the use of techniques to improve a site’s rankings normally through the artificial creation of links, so we have outlined the main areas to watch out for. Since keywords are so important in SEO it is heavily recommended you get a keyword tool such as Keyword Expert or SEO Elite. This will save time and guess work, and will increase your SEO results.

What Happens When I Submit my URL to a Search Engine?

1. The search engine’s spider visits your site immediately and decides when to make a real visit.
2. A couple of weeks (maybe 6) later, the spider comes back and records the information from your site, filling its database (one darn big database if you ask me). Unfortunately, the algorithm (and everything about it) is secret, so we can’t do anything but guess how many pages of your site the spider will actually visit (referred to as crawled) or how many of your pages make it back to the database. Usually, on the first time around, it will be only a few pages – or only the home page.
3. The spider revisits your site to grab any changes you’ve made. Once a page is in the database, the spider will go back to new sites based on how often you make changes and it will start to look at more pages. We will cover the ways to make the spider search more often later. Once your first page is in the database it is a good idea to make a link from that page to your site map – it is very important to have your site map spidered.
4. When people use a search engine, they type keywords into a search box on the search engine’s website. They are submitting a query. The search engine, depending on algorithms, will pull up all of the sites relevant to that query.

It’s thought that Google’s algorithms are also programmed to place emphasis on sites that are listed a manmade directory. However many top SEO’s argue this holds less weight today. It is a good idea to get listed in as many directories as possible. This simple piece of software can save you a lot of time and effort: Directory Inclusion.

What is a Search Engine?

A search engines is the tool of Internet users for finding whatever it is that they want or need on the web. Search engines are that special thing that allows people to search the world for what makes them happy. There are both limitations on search engines that are built by design and by web sites owners’ choice - I can choose to have my site remain invisible to the rest of the world.

A search engine sends a ’spider’ out to gather information on the websites of the world. This is the tool that is the base for our being able to search the internet.

There are two to get your site spidered:

1. The spider will automatically find your site from a link on someone else’s site
2. You submit your URL so that the spider will come out and find it (I do both)

How Does a Search Engine Index Web Pages?

There are four main things know about a search engine for optimization:

1. The spider is a program that goes out and gathers up web pages (the process is referred to as being spidered (I was spidered last week)
2. The database is where the spider will store the pages that it finds
3. The search engine website (http://www. google.com is my choice) is where you and I go to find information from the database
4. The algorithms are programs that determine which sites will come up when you and I type our search request