Search Engine and Directory Overview

Search Engines and Directories are the two major parts of the internet search services. It is very important to understand the search engine before you start working on your rankings. Infact, 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. Apart from understanding the two mediums, it is also equally important to know the fundamental difference between the two. People assemble directories but it is the search engine software which decides whether to include a page or not.

It takes a lot of time and strategy to decide how a website can be made visible on a search engine. A lot of changes need to made which can include 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, creation of a crawler page or doorway pages should be done which will assist in the development of the pages. Once this process is completed the process of submission begins.

Almost all the traffic to a website is directed from major search engines and directories. Whenever a typical web user needs to find something on the Internet, he/she will almost always 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.

Infact, research says that almost 95% of web users find what they are looking for by visiting top 6 search engines. It also shows that it is difficult for a visitor to view more than 30 results of the sites listed on searching. 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.