Everyone knows that in order to get more hits to your site that it is necessary to increase your ranking in search engines, but the question is how? Search engines have come a long way since the web first began. No longer can you just enter keywords and meta-tags and expect your site to list well.

The two main types of "search engines" are crawler based search engines and human powered directories. One is no better than the other, but the success of your website in each search engine is based on meeting its specific requirements.

Crawler Based Search Engines:

Crawler based search engines such as Google and Yahoo create their listings automatically. Their network “crawls” through the web and detects any site that contain the keywords, links and headings that are listed the most within your search words. The site that has the most keywords throughout the content, page title, headings and links will achieve the highest ranking for your search term. Crawler based sites are the #1 used sites for web searches.

Human Powered Directory:

A human powered directory such as Open Directory Project depends on humans for its listings. You submit a short description of your business to the directory for your entire site, or editors write one for sites they review. A search query looks for matches only in the descriptions submitted.

The elements that are useful for improving a listing with a search engine have nothing to do with improving a listing in a directory. The only exception is that a well-designed site with valuable content might be more likely to get reviewed for free than a poor site.

Now that we know which search engines are out there, lets look at what we can do to achieve a higher ranking.