When numbers do matter

When numbers do matter

There are billions of web pages resident on the World Wide Web and this figure is growing exponentially. By the time you finish reading this article, the number of web pages will have increased significantly. Navigating through this maze is a mammoth task and therefore more and more people resort to search engines to find exactly what they are looking for. A website that cannot be found via search engines can be deemed as invisible and would therefore defeat the very purpose of building it in the first place. Search engine visibility or presence therefore commands utmost importance. However, the endeavor to reach the target audience does not end with getting listed on search engines.

Numerous studies and researches have empirically proved that majority of Internet users utilize search engines to locate products and services. A study revealed that 95% of the total traffic comes from the first three result pages. The tools of search engines marketing are used to gain the required visibility by ranking high on keywords that are used by searchers to locate products/services being offered by the particular website. However confining the visibility to a set of keywords would limit the true potential of a website and hence a wider 'overall presence' is mandated. The 'overall presence' should therefore be used as a metric to assess the heath of search engine marketing campaigns. Having more pages indexed with various search engines serves this very purpose and is termed as search engine saturation.

Search engine saturation is referred to the number of web pages that a given search engine has in its index for a particular website. The more web pages present in the search engine index, the more is the probability of the website being found by searchers. This feat can be achieved by understanding how search engines index web page and use the knowledge to one's benefit. Every time a new web page is added to the World Wide Web, the page is indexed by search engines. Each search engine maintains its own index database and therefore the search engine saturation of a website would vary from one search engine to other. Each time a search is performed, the search engines present web pages from its index database, based on relevance. Having search engine compliant (based on the guidelines provided by search engines) website is necessary as it would facilitate frequent indexing. Having a website which cannot be indexed or can only be indexed partially will spell disaster for the website. This is due to the fact the search engine would not able be to present it to searchers as it does not reside in the index database.

Apart from having search engine compliant website, there are several other factors that can be used to enhance search engine saturation. Mentioned below are a few of them:

1. One way links: One way links are a great way of increasing the number of indexed pages. Search engine crawlers follow the link structure of the web and therefore having more inbound links would effectively increase the chances of the page being indexed by search engines. However one should ensure that not all the links point to the home page but is evenly distributed amongst all inner web pages.

2. Xml sitemap: Creating an xml site map and submitting it to search engines would also assist in enhancing the number of indexed pages. The site map clearly tells crawlers the number of web pages and the associated url. This information ensures that all the pages of your site are indexed by search engines.

3. Unique and fresh content: Search engines love fresh and unique content, especially Google. Adding new content to your website on a regular basis would mean that the crawlers would have something new to index, every time it visits your website.

4. Server speed: Having a massive site which takes more time to load can have a negative impact on your endeavor to augment the number of indexed pages. This is due to the fact that search engine crawlers might not be able to retrieve all the pages due to slow server speed.

5. Internal linking: Interlinking the inner pages of a website would facilitate the movement of search engine crawlers from one web page to another. This in turn would help in getting more pages indexed. Broken links or abrupt navigational structure would potentially hamper the movement of search engine crawlers.

There are many more ways in which you could increase the search engine saturation of your website. Exercising all the above options and others would play a significant role in increasing the search engine visibility of your website.