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Getting Listed
Listing your site with the search engines
Because there are millions of sites on the Internet
with more being added every day, your site will always have
competition for placement in the top 40 sites of your category.
Search engines inspect the Internet for new information daily,
weekly, or monthly, depending on their programming. A site that is
the number one search result today could easily be number ten, or
lower, tomorrow. There are no foolproof methods for getting your site
highly ranked, or keeping it there.
All search engines take submissions, though a few charge a fee for
it. Each one has a different system of listing sites. You can
manually check out every search engine you can think of, or you can
go to a site-submission service and follow their steps to have your
site submitted to multiple search engines. A good one to try is Search
Engine Garage.
Note: Submitting your
site to search engines does not automatically guarantee listing in
their engines. Neither Pacific WebWorks or the individual search
engines can predict when and/or if your site will appear in search queries.
Creating a Web site that gets listed
Once a search engine knows about your site, either a human or a
computer will analyze it. Criteria involved in this analysis include:
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Keywords and phrases -
Always insert keyword and description "meta tags." Meta
tags are special HTML tags inserted at the top of your pages that are
often weighed heavily by search engines. The WebWizard Editor has a
special meta tag editor that
allows you to insert these important tags on each of your Web pages.
You can insert both a keyword meta tag and a description meta tag.
When you are choosing your key phrases, make them two or more words
in length. Because of the vast amount of content on the Internet,
searches for single words usually return results from thousands of
sites. Multiple words and key phrases limit the amount of competition
you will face and will increase your chance of being listed near the
top of a search. Make your descriptions concise and meaningful.
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Title tags - The most
important area in which to place keywords is in the title. If you
want to be referenced near the top of a search, make sure to include
your keywords in your title.
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Place your keywords near the top of
your pages - Have your keywords placed near the top of your
home page as a category title or part of your first few sentences. It
is best to place your keywords above any graphics on the page.
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Title your graphics relevantly -
Give your graphics meaningful names that incorporate your keywords and title
words. For instance, on a site that sells antique
furniture, it is better to title a picture of an antique chair "antiques1.gif"
instead of "0000.1.gif". This keeps your keyword "antique" in
the search engine's results.
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Use your keywords frequently
- Many search engines also consider the frequency of your keywords in
relation to other text on the page. Use your keywords often, but only
if it is reasonable and relevant to do so.
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Don't spam your pages
- Because search engines rely heavily on keywords and key phrases,
some pages have keywords used repeatedly and irrelevantly in a text
color the same as the background color. This is called spamming and
many search engines penalize these sites, and may even remove them
from their searches.
For more information, check out Search
Engine Watch.
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