Search Engines are the most important means of navigation on the web. When someone wants to find something, they go to one of the search engines, enter their search key words, and press the search button.  The search results are sites that contain those key words or close to those key words.  These words have been extracted from sites that have been submitted to the search engines.

Main Street USA Network along with NBCOL.COM and NBCOL.NET have built their own business card page databases, which submit their newly added pages to the major search engines.

When it comes to the Web, there are three ways people will find your site:

1. Self-promotion: Listing your URL on business cards, letterhead, flyers, etc.
2. Search Engines / Online Directories / Newsgroups
3. Links from other sites

Search Engines / Online Directories / Newsgroups

This is where the user is actively searching for information through keyword searches, or categories in a directory or receives notification of your site through a newsgroup. We don't recommend using newsgroups for your card pages, since these are not web sites, only pages. We can provide you with a site if that is something you feel you need.

Links

The Web is basically built on Links. Links get you from one page of a site to another. More importantly, links to your site from another related site can generate a great deal of traffic. If you have a Web site or page about your new Low-Fat Cookbook, you could get links placed to your site on hundreds, if not thousands, of related sites on Health, Nutrition, Cooking, etc. Unfortunately, there is no easy or automatic way to do this. It requires visiting all the related sites, getting the Email address of the owner/webmasters and contacting them asking to trade links. The card pages do not offer direct links, but the links can be added to the free links on Main Street, if they are family oriented. The effort can be well worth it. Many site receive a great deal more traffic from links than they do from search engines.

Virtual Domains

Although not necessary, having your own virtual domain can be worth its weight in gold. For one thing, it's portable. If you change service providers or hosting services, your domain name will stay the same. Secondly, it can make finding your site a lot easier. If you wanted to find out about the newest Toyota cars - what would you type into your browser without doing a search first? Do you think www.toyota.com might work? O.K., so your not a major corporation - think of which is easiest to remember and best describes your site?:

http://www.somethingt.net/~myWeb page or http://www.lowfatcooking.com ?

Ask you service provider about Virtual Domains. Main Street USA/WebBender network can provide virtual site hosting too, or take a free site from myfreeoffice and set up your own site, it's one of the least imposing free sites around with lots of great internet marketing helps..

Understanding Search Engines

There are three important elements to search engines: information database, the user search, and the presentation and ranking of results.

The Information Database is container of indexed description of your Web page. Historically they were a link list, later became a huge link list with small description for each link and now they have special Search algorithm to find needed Web pages by using keywords.

A Search engine can send back just the title and URL of each Web page it visits, or just parse some HTML tags, or it can send back the entire text of each Web page. Alta Vista, Excite, and OpenText have more than 30 million Web pages indexed.

The average time between submitting your URL and getting it into the database seems to be 6-8 weeks. In addition, a submission may expire very rapidly, no longer appearing in searches after a month or two, apparently due to insufficient site updating. Most search engines check their databases to see if URLs still exist and to see if they have been recently updated.

User Search

Most engines interpret lower case as unspecified, but upper case will match only upper case, but there are exceptions. There is no standard at all for truncation. It is different in general and advanced search mode for every engine.

Phrases

Check with your engine's help file before starting a search. Most engines allow you to type in a few words, and then search for occurrences of these words in database. Each one has their own rules of deciding what to do about approximate spellings, plural variations, and truncation. By searching only in titles, one can get Web pages with only brief mentions of a concept, and only retrieve Web pages that really focus on your concept. By searching links, one can determine how many and which Web pages point at your Web site or page.

Understanding what each Web page does with the non-standard pluralization, truncation, etc. can be quite important in how successful your searches will be.

Ranking

Search engines give each document they find some measure(ranking) of the quality of the match to your search query - a score. Relevant scores reflect the number of times a search term appears, if it appears in the title, if it appears at the beginning of the document or HTML tags, and if all the search terms are near each other; some explanation are given in each search engines help files. Some engines allow the user to control the relevance score by giving different weights to each search word. One thing that all engines do is to use alphabetical order or date stamp in their display algorithm. If relevance scores are not very different for various matches, then you end up with default list . A good summary is useful too. The summary is usually composed of the title of a document and some text from the beginning of the document.

Links

Some search engines find your Web site or page by links from other Web pages. Even if you have sent in your URL, your Web site or page can be indexed longer and ranked higher in search results if many links lead to your Web site or page. Links can be important in some Search Engines in achieving good exposure. This is part of the importance of having your pages on NBCOL.NET and NBCOL.COM all linking to each other's card pages if no site is available.

Text

If a Web page lacks descriptive text, then there is little chance that Web page will come up in the results of a search engine query. This why your description is so important for both the META tags, and the body text.

Pick your keywords

Focus on the 4-10 keywords that you think are most important to your Web site or page, then ensure those words are both in your title and mentioned at the beginning of your Web page description.   Generally, most people will already have those words present on their Web pages but may not also have them in Web page titles and descriptions.

Keep in mind that the keywords you consider crucial may not be exactly what users enter to search on. The addition of just one extra word can make a Web site or page appear more relevant, and it can be impossible to guess what that word will be. Choose the right keywords and the right description.

Links inside Web pages

If there are no links inside Web pages from the Web page, it seems that some search engines will not register a Web site or page. Your card page once paid for will have at least a link to one of the other card pages on the NBCOL sites.

Patience

Some search engines take weeks before they update their databases. They may be crawling each night, but those new findings aren't available until the new update. Once you are in an engine, check your Web site or page at least once a month. If your listing is deleted, resubmit URL again. Many search engines are visiting Web site or pages on a schedule developed from Web site or page changes. Resubmitting every month or two will ensure that your Web site or page's content is kept current.

Meta Tags

Meta tags will help you control your Web site or page's description in engines that support them. Adding some meta description code can be useful, but is not the only method to increase your rankings. Your description and the keywords you enter on your business card are used in your META tags for your card page.

Alternative forms

Search engines are a primary way people look for Web site or pages, but some people find Web sites through links, traditional advertising, newsgroup postings, online directories. These alternative forms can be more effective draws than are search engines. It is up to you to add your link to other online directories.

Specialized Search Engines and Directories

Other than the main search engines, there are other minor search engines / online directories that specialize in certain fields. These Web sites can be found using keyword searches. Many allow you to register for free. Visit them directly. You will be automatically entered into the NBCOL directory, as you will be on the Main Street business card directory.

Other tips

Change your title regularly and register your Web Page again. Some search engines will list multiple versions of your page.

Title in your HTML code

Search Engines consider a Web page title to be the most telling description of the content of a Web page. Your business name is used for this, so choose it carefully.

This does not mean the first major heading on the Web page itself, it means the caption which appears on the title bar of your browser. It's important to put as many keywords as possible in the title of your main index page.

META Tags in your HTML code

Your <META> text should appear in the <HEAD> part of your document, like this:

<HEAD>
<META Name="description" Content="Write your description here">
<META Name="keywords" Content="Keywords or phrases, separated by commas">
</HEAD>

Body

The search engines sort Web pages in order of the density of keywords in the document. It doesn't matter how many times keywords appear in the document, only the percentage.

Why place your business card on Main Street and the NBCOLs?

• The Main Street pages are added to the NBCOL search database and each card also gets a page added to each NBCOL.NET and NBCOL.COM all linked to one another if a web site hasn't been specified. Which means 3 unique URLs to submit to the major search engines and 3 pages you can add to free links directories if you care to do so.
• Testing headlines: You can change your own description on the Main Street page, and after the updated page has been registered with the search engines you can see if your traffic count rate has increased. That may take up to 8 weeks.
• Your cards can link to your site, and you will find an amazing number of hits if your description is attractive and inviting. If you don't have a site, you can have us build you a descriptive 1+ page ad which you can link to, or have the 3 card pages link to your other card pages.

How we can help you

Once you have submitted your card as a Standard paid card, we can help you with your title, description and keywords for best placement on the search engines  (It is up to you to place your pages in the links directories.) From there you can either test new headlines, or use the ones that bring a good response, in other hard copy advertising media. The benefits you can gain from the exposure that a Main Street Business card can give you are immeasurable, but the actual cost to you is minimal. NO other business card directory gives you so much for so little, with free email and web site links on 3 domains.