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Search engine positioning tips

Topic: Search engines
Products: iNETstore 2002, iNETstore Studio 2001

Search engine positioning is an art in itself. This article looks briefly at a few of the options available to you.

Search engines typically don't like indexing database driven web sites due to the large amount of information that a database driven web site may contain. 

There are three ways to effectively index your web site for search engines:

1. Gateway pages

2. iNETstore 2002 "se" code

3. Pay per click

Gateway pages

Gateway pages are static html files that are optimized for a search term at each search engine. Each search engine indexes keywords differently. An effective Gateway page should be optimized for a specific search engine. Unfortunately search engines change their search engine algorithms often so keeping up with this process is very time consuming. The product Web Position is a software tool that makes managing gateway pages simpler by making keyword optimization recommendations for each search engine. It can also be setup to monitor your web sites (or your competitors) ranking with the search engines.

iNETstore 2002 "se" code

iNETstore 2002 implemented some code within every store template that a search engine would find and index. The code in the "se" directory is a simple way to have all of the products in your database listed in the search engine. However, unlike Gateway pages the indexed page is not optimized for specific keyword phrases.

The code can be found in the store directory:


To index this page with a search engine enter its URL:


where www.storeDomain.com = your domain name

The page within this folder displays all of the items within your inventory database. This enables all of those keywords to be indexed by the search engine.

At the top of the page is a hyperlink that enables a user to login into the home page of the store.

Studio 2001 users may download this code here. To install simply extract the archive into your store directory. 

Pay per click

Many search engines today, including Google and Overture, now support "pay per click" advertising. Advertisers that bid the most will be listed at the top of the search results. Advertisers will only be charged their bid when a user clicks on the link and visits the advertisers web site. 

With pay per click you can advertise for specific keyword phrases. For example, if you sold tennis shoes then you might register the keyword phrase "tennis shoes". Further if your web site is regionally specific then you might also specify a location in your phrase. For example, "tennis shoes Australia". In effect the result is similar to creating Gateway pages except that you paying for your web site to be listed in the search results rather than counting on your ability to create pages that will index better than somebody else's pages.

There are no limits on the number of keywords that you can register so long as they are relevant to the products and services that you sell. Visit the advertising sections of these search engines for more information.

As you can imagine this form of advertising is becoming more and more popular with the search engines. As a result, no matter how much effort that you put into search engine positioning you may find that there are several advertisers that have their links above yours.