all about search engines for car dealers - short version

All About Search EnginesSearch Engines use tools called Spiders to discover what a web site is all about for ranking purposes

Spiders are automatically sent out by Search Engines to catalog every web page in the world every few weeks

Spiders cannot see any Graphics, Flash, or Script – only Text, and the Google Spider is the smartest of all

Search Engine Spiders often somewhat ignore web site content inside of Frames, especially Google & Yahoo

Say Thanks To Google!The old game was based on META tags that “faked out” the Search Engine Spider by duplicating key words to make a web site appear more relevant

Thanks to Google, the new game is based on real Organic Relevance where web sites are now primarily cataloged based on the actual content and Popularity of the web site (ie…links, clicks, visits, revisits, time,)

Contrary to what many “Search Engine Optimization” experts say, the big name Spiders do not pay much attention to META tags any more (80% and growing)

The Rise Of Google…

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Search Engine Traffic…

May 2004, Com Score (http://sewatch.com/reports/article.php/2156431)

Let’s Visit The Matrix…This tool allows you to see real-time Google Popularity

http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html

It shows the actual real-time Popularity of web site links

Links from your web site only help other web sites

Input the following web sites:

www.google.com

www.reyrey.com

Search Engine RankingsAll Search Engines index text and follow links, and some measure Popularity and Organic Relevance (Google)

Search Engines start with the URL, then the title of pages, and then the top of a web page working down “below the fold” to the bottom looking for text and links

As a general rule, if you cannot highlight “text” on a web page, then it is a Graphic, and Graphics are ignored by Spiders because they cannot read Graphics

If a web site is 100% Flash, then only the URL and page titles are indexed now that META tags are not important

Search Engine SuccessWhat are the factors that influence Popularity?

Search Engine SuccessGoogle’s Spider is so smart that it can easily recognize changes in fonts, bold, colors, indents and text layout formatting to determine the true intention of a web page

Location, location, location…Spiders look for location information about where a business can be found

For example, you would not want to use a text link on a web page such as “Our Office” when you could use a more descriptive link such as “Our San Diego Office”

File names and URL query strings should be separated by hyphens and underscores to be cataloged correctly

Search Engine Success

Google Ranking due to file name with hyphens

Splash & Flash = TrashWeb sites with 100% Flash-oriented Splash pages are virtually unreadable to Search Engine Spiders…

These type of web sites were “all the rage” until Google changed the rules by eliminating META-tags as a way for Flash developers to cheat the system since Spiders cannot read even 1% of Flash code

Web developers that insist on building this type of “Eye Candy” web site have little regard for their best interests

Organic Relevance is what has the most impact on search engine rankings…

Don’t Play The Frame GameFrames are used on many web sites today, but most Spiders discontinue indexing when they encounter one

WebMakerX uses absolutely no frames in our sites, but Cobalt uses frames extensively in Nitra

AutoMark web sites all use frames except for the Home Pages, so we have implemented a temporary fix with titles and key phrases embedded within most frames

Most competitors including Cobalt heavily use frames

SpiderizationOur SpiderMAZE tool has the ability to use behind the scenes “spider vision” glasses to look at some of our competitor’s web sites just like a Spider would see them

What you see on these screen-shots is similar to what a Search Engine Spider will see that will help or harm web site ranking on Search Engine results

First let’s visit the following web site for our experiment:

http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html

Spiderization

To use this free public tool, simply input the URL here. Please note that you must include the http:// prefix in front of the “www” to make it work!

Spiderization#4…Dealer.com: www.longbeachhonda.com

Human View Spiderization View

Spiderization#3…Cobalt Group: www.huffinesdodge.com

Human View Spiderization View

Spiderization#2…AutoMark: www.cogginauto.com

Human View Spiderization View

Spiderization#1…WebMakerX: examplepitstop.site.webmakerx.net

Spiderization View #1 Spiderization View #2

Search Engine SummaryA web site may still have excellent rankings on Search Engines even if they use 100% Flash because the web site was registered before META tag changes

Through time, these web sites will likely have a severe degradation of ranking unless they re-write their tools

Search Engine placement can also be influenced through the purchasing of key word phrases

Go to www.google.com and type in “Third Coast Media”