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Search Engines are tools for finding information on the Internet. If you consider that there are literally billions of websites available on the Internet today, and this number is growing fast, then you can understand that searching for specific information amongst them all without any help would be very difficult.

You use a Search Engine by entering keywords or key-phrases that describe the topic of the information you are searching for. The Search Engine then trawls through its database of websites compiling a list of all those that are related to your keyword topic. It then returns this list of related websites ranked in the order that it thinks are most relevant to your keyword topic.

Getting your website to appear at the top of Search Engine result lists for searches on keywords relevant to your business will drive potential customers to visit it, just like a newspaper advert would attract customers. The better the position, the more potential customers are likely to visit your website. So getting highly ranked by Search Engines is an essential way to promote your website.

Directories are similar to Search Engines in as far as they are tools for finding information on the internet, however they use a more structured approach to categorising websites. The difference between them can be illustrated by imagining looking for information in a book. Using a Directory would be like using the contents section to find the information, whereas using a Search Engine would be like using the Index section. These differences in organisation must be appreciated when considering your Search Engine/Directory marketing campaigns.

The term Search Engine is often used to include Directories as well as Search Engines, as we will do so here, however, be aware that there are subtle differences in the way they both work.

In order to get your website onto the Search Engine databases, you must first submit it to them. Most Search Engines have a 'submit URL page', where you can submit your website's address and other details regarding the nature of the site. However, this does not mean your website is now on the Search Engine's database.

Before a Search Engine will admit your website into their database, they will either review it manually, in the case of directories, or use a computer program called a Robot or Spider to crawl through it, in the case of Search Engines. Only if your website meets their criteria will they accept it. This is to ensure that their database only contains quality, relevant websites, as they don't want their search results to produce lists of poor, unrelated websites.

If your website is accepted, the whole process of reviewing and including it into a Search Engine's database can take between 3 to 8 weeks, depending on the Search Engine. Once you do get your website accepted into a Search Engines database, you should re-submit it every time you make any changes or updates. The Search engines will not be instantly aware of these changes, re-submitting will let them know. However, care must be taken as every Search Engine has its own submission rules, excessive submission can be regarding as spamming, which can negatively affect your ranking, and in worst cases result in your website being rejected.

You only really need to submit your website to the major 10 or so Search Engines as these will account for roughly 90% or more of all internet searches, so don't waste your time with offers stating automatic submission to thousands of Search Engines, so few people use obscure search engines that even if you ranked number 1, you wouldn't receive much extra traffic.

In the past, almost all Search Engines allowed free URL submission, many are now moving towards a paid submission service, where for a charge, your website will be reviewed, and if successful, included into their database faster than using the free submission. Whether or not these express services are worth the expense really depends upon the specific Search Engine.

Each Search Engine provides their own guidelines on what they regard as quality, relevant websites, try to make time to research these. Here are a few general guidelines.

-Provide informative content. If you are selling a product, try to provide as much relevant information about it as possible.

-Do not submit any site that is not finished. Any broken links, under construction signs or missing images may lead to your site being rejected.

-Ensure everything works on your site when using both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, such as forms, JavaScript and any CGI scripts.

If you do not get accepted at first, take a couple of weeks to improve your site. Ask friends or customers for feedback, provide more information about products, even change your layout and navigation to make finding information more straightforward, and then re-submit.

The whole business of trying to get your website to rank well is called Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), and involves designing, writing and coding your website to target selected keywords or key-phrases in such a way that a Search Engine will score it highly. Factors that affect Search Engine ranking include keyword concentration, keyword placement, link popularity etc.

Each Search Engine applies different rules and algorithms for determining how they rank websites, so when it comes to optimisation, you should aim to optimise your website for the main Search Engines that are going to drive the most traffic to your site, such as Google, AltaVista, etc. However, all Search Engines constantly alter their rules and algorithms, this prevents people learning and abusing them to get their websites to rank highly for unrelated keywords, what the Search Engines term Spamming. It is also for this reason that no-one can guarantee a search engine position, so beware of this when considering hiring a Search Engine Optimisation specialist.

In order to have a successful Search Engine Optimisation campaign, it is critical that you select the right keywords or key-phrases to optimise your website around. You must choose keywords that people wanting your services or products will use in Search Engines. Put yourself in your customers place and try to come up with the type of keywords they would use to find your website, ask friends or customers what keywords they would use. You could also get ideas by looking at the keywords used in your competitors websites.

Ideally, you will want to select keywords or key-phrases that are used in Search Engines very regularly, that are specific to your Web site, but less competitive. Less competitive means that there are fewer websites that can be found using that specific keyword. For example, if you have a jewellery shop in Edinburgh and you use Google to help you find your chosen keywords, if you use the keyword 'jewellery' in Google, it will find over 1 million matches, that's over 1 million websites you are competing against, if however you try the key-phrase 'Edinburgh jewellery', Google will find only around 19,000 matches, less websites to compete with. Fortunately sites such as WordTracker actually provide a service that tells you how frequently keywords and key-phrases are used, and how competitive they are, which takes a lot of guesswork out of the task of finding the right keywords for you.

It is also very important to regularly monitor your ranking position with the major Search Engines, if your ranking position changes for the worse, you need to know about it straight away so you can deal with it quickly and effectively. For a quick fix, often simply re-submitting to the Search Engine can repair the damage, but it is always best to make site improvements first.

Google is currently the biggest, fastest and most popular Search Engine around. Due to its simplicity, practically everyone knows about it and uses it, you really must have your website listed here. Google uses a robot called Googlebot to crawl through websites submitted to it. Google refreshes its database roughly every 60 days, however sites with a high ranking can be updated much faster.

Yahoo! was the first Web directory, and is still one of the most popular. Websites submitted to Yahoo are reviewed manually by a human editor and thus their database is constantly refreshed.

FAST is currently the biggest rival to Google as it has focussed its attention on search power and ease of use. FAST uses a robot called FAST to crawl websites submitted to it. FAST refreshes its database every 2 weeks.

At one point AltaVista was the biggest and fastest Search Engines around, until Google got ahead of it. AltaVista uses a robot called Scooter to crawl websites submitted to it. AltaVista refreshes its database roughly every 3 months.

Inktomi provides results for several other major Search Engine and Directories, so getting into their database means you may turn up on other databases too. Inktomi uses a robot called Slurp to crawl websites submitted to it.

HotBot is owned by Lycos but it remains an independent search engine. It receives a great deal of its search results from Inktomi, and as such doesn't have its own robot. HotBot tends to refresh its database every 60 days.

Lycos is a hybrid of directory and search engine. It's main directory listings come from the Open Directory (DMOZ). It uses a robot called lycos to crawl the web for its Search Engine results, it also take results from FAST. Lycos refreshes its database every 60 days.

The DMOZ directory uses over 30,000 volunteer editors to manage its 350,000 categories, and as such, websites submitted to it are reviewed manually. Although not very many people use DMOZ to actually search for information, it is very important that you get listed by it as thousands of Search Engines and other Directories use this as a data source, including Google and HotBot.

Overture was formerly called GoTo.com. It invented the pay-per-click or pay-for-placement model of keyword-based advertising and is the biggest of the paid-listing Search Engines around.