I run a family owned e-commerce site selling sheet music. My primary
competitor is listed very high in almost all of the search engines,
how can I get a similar or better position.  I am already successfully
using several Pay-Per-Click services, I am looking to improve my
listing in the non PPC searches.

I understand that some search engines use the number of sites pointing
to your site as a key criteria for placement.  How important is this?

---

Request for Question Clarification by j0e-ga on 09 May 2002 15:35 PDT

Hi musicman

I want to make sure I answer your question completely. Can you please
confirm that your questions (paraphrased) are:

1. how can you improve your listing with free (no-fee) search engines?

2. how much significance do search engines give to being linked to by
other sites?

Please affirm for me that this is the information you are after, or if
you have any additional questions also.

Thanks,
j0e

---

Clarification of Question by musicman-ga on 09 May 2002 17:19 PDT

j0e,

Yes this is what I am after.  Also, I would like to know the best
rated (meaning by their customers) services/software available to help
you improve your listing position (if there are any).

Musicman

Hi! Thanks for this very interesting and useful question.

Search engines find websites in different methods and in different
algorithms. Due to the intense battle for market share Search Engines
have remained very secretive of their inner workings. However, the
basics are the same. Crawler based search engines “spider” or look-up
websites and lists them whenever they are found.

To be able to improve your listing with free search engines Search
Engine Watch provides tips on the following:

1. Picking Your Keywords: Keywords must be at least two or more words
long.

2. Use Meta Tags to control the description of your site to search
engines.

3. Position your keywords in crucial locations of the page. The
article says  that keywords should appear “high” on or on top of  the
page.

4. Your page must have relevant content or that the content must be on
HTML text rather than in graphics.

5. Avoid using frames since search engines have a hard time listing
them.
6. Provide links to your inner pages right from your home page sine
the crucial content is usually in the inner pages. Search engine
crawlers can then find these pages and index them as well.

The full article can be found on this link

Search Engine Placement Tips By Danny Sullivan    
http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/tips.html

The following articles by Brett Tabke are also very good sources for
your listing purposes. Be sure to follow the street-smart steps
involved here.

Designing a High Search Engine Rankings Page  
http://www.searchengineworld.com/tips/doit.htm

Reciprocal Links and Their Importance  
http://www.searchengineworld.com/tips/recip.htm

Misc Tips: Web Site Promotion Do's and Don'ts  
http://www.searchengineworld.com/tips/keywords.htm

For more on HTML Meta Tags:

How To Use HTML Meta Tags By Danny Sullivan
http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/meta.html

Using a Robots Meta Tag Brett Tabke
https://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=13783#a

The next web pages discuss the importance of links to other sites.

Increase Search Engine Rank With Link Popularity by Larisa Thomason, 
http://www.netmechanic.com/news/vol3/promo_no16.htm

Winners Don't Take All: Link Popularity for the Rest of Us
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/02/sd0417-nec-winners.html

Search Terms Used:
Search engine listing tips link importance

I hope this will help you. Good luck on your search engine rankings.

Regards,
Easterangel-ga

Some search engines rate he number of sites pointing to your site
as very important, others less so.  Quoted from "Getting (and Keeping
a Top Search Engine Ranking" by Tom Dahm:

"
AltaVista	
Uses link analysis and ranks sites based on "good" link popularity. Tends to 
ignore links generated through "link exchange" programs.

Excite	
Uses link popularity and quality data to determine relevancy.

Inktomi	
Link popularity is one ranking criteria.

GO
Link popularity is one ranking criteria.

Google	
Uses weighted link popularity and analyzes link content almost exclusively to
determine site rankings. Recently partnered with Yahoo - the largest directory.

Infoseek	
Link popularity is considered in the new retrieval algorithm.
"

If you'd like to learn more I suggest 
{http://www.free-web-site-promotion.org/search_engine/search_ranking.html}

If I can be of any other help, let me know.

First you want to make sure you are competing for the right phrase. 
To do this, go to a service such as Wordtracker or Netmechanic and see
what people are actually searching for.  You can enter the phrases you
think best describe your business, similar phrases, and see which ones
have the most traffic.  You might be surprised.  It doesn't matter if
you're ranked #1 for a search phrase that nobody is looking for.
Another trick you can try is to check and see who is linking to your
competitor.  Do a Google search for
"link:http://www.yourcompetitor.com(org/whatever).  You will see a
list of sites that have linked to that site, many of these people will
also link to you, if you're in the same business.  That will help your
ranking in Google, as well as other search engines that use page
ranking.

Search engines use keywords, try to have the most keywords in the meta
keywords, i.e. <meta name="keywords" content="your keywords">. You'll
be better ranked if your keyword is also used in the title and in the
URL and often used in the page.
The keywords have to be used by people who want to go on your website
and not be deceptive. I mean, it's not worth having "music" because
it's hard to be among the firsts with such an often-used keyword, but
not a word none would search. I remind you (or: teach?) that all, I
don't know your search engine optimization (SEO) level.

Search engines also use links to your website to determine its rank,
i.e. you can ask people to put a link from their site to yours. In
exchange, propose them a link from your site to theirs(link exchange).
Always put a reciprocical link: reciprocity makes you better improve
your Rank.

http://www.searchengineguide.com/detlev/2002/0415_dj1.html

With Google; the site you demand to link to your site has to be well
chosen. If its PageRank is too low, yours will become lower with the
link, too. So, look at the PageRank before! You can do it by loading
the Google Toolbar and by looking at a site in

http://directory.google.com

and select viewing in Google PageRank order. 

As an advice, if you want to keep well-informed about search engines,
subscribe to newsletters with this topic, such as:

http://www.searchengineguide.com/links/subscribe.cgi

(suscribe to the weekly newsletter)

or:

http://www.acws.com

Try them, it'll be worth.

A few websites:

http://www.searchengineguide.com
http://searchenginewatch.com

Try SEO with Google or another search engine, it'll be worth too.
Forgive me my mistakes, I am but a froggy.

Is your site listed in the appropriate dmoz category?  A lot of sites
link to dmoz and a few (such as directory.google.com) even mirror the
entire directory, so being listed in dmoz can increase your rank in
search engines that take links into consideration.

Not only the Open Directory Project, but also Yahoo improve PageRank
if you are in these directories.

All you need is a search engine optimization campaign, some good
keywords to optimize your site and strong link popularity. Here is an
smart effective keyword selection: as of the beginning of February
2001, the keyword "schools" has 34,618 sites in the MSN search engine
database. But the keyword PHRASE "private schools" has 310 sites
listed. Would you rather compete against 34,618 sites or 310 sites? Of
course the answer is obvious, you want to compete against a smaller
group. Furthermore, "schools" had 451 searches done while "private
schools" had 120. The ratio, for "schools," is 76 to 1, yet for
"private schools," it is 0.4 to 1! That's 76 sites for each search
done for "schools" versus .4 sites for each search done for "private
schools" at MSN, which by the way averages about 10% of all search
traffic.

Check out http://1st-meta-tags.businessresearchsources.com. You can
find there affordable web optimization solutions.