As of August, 2000, it was estimated that there were 2.3 billion Web pages. How are you going to get people to look at even ONE of YOUR Web pages? No matter how beautiful a job you do on your site, few people are going to see it unless they know it exists.
What you need to do is to promote your site. There are many ways to do it. The most important tool in promoting your site is to be accessible through search engines. Search engines are the way most people access sites: over 1/3 of page accesses are done that way. Yet only about 15% of Web pages are accessible by search engines.
Search engines use various methods for finding sites. Many of them search for keywords on web pages. A keyword is any term that is specified by the viewer to be searched for.
Usually a search engine employs what's called a "spider" to look for documents containing the keyword(s). The resulting documents are then displayed based on criteria set by the different search engines. Top
There is no one specific way that search engines use keywords. They generally use different rules. However most search engines will look in the top area of your page's code for the keywords. Note that words seen on your page that are actually part of an image file will not be "seen" by the search engine.
Only words that are in the page's source code itself will be identifiable. They don't even need to be visible in the browser window. For example, words used in "meta tags" in the "head" part of your HTML page won't be seen in the browser window but can be seen in the page's source code (see below).
The areas on your page that you ought to place your keywords in are, first and foremost, the title, followed by the "meta tags" and then the uppermost regular text that viewers see in the browser. Be sure you have your most important keywords in each.
It used to be that some Web site developers would repeat keywords in their pages in vast quantities. However they would hide them from being seen by putting them in meta tags or make them the same color as the background so they wouldn't be seen. The keywords would, however, be visible in the code, which is where the search engine looks.
Word repetition is no longer a guarantee that you'll be ranked high. Many search engines have a cap on how many times a keyword can be repeated on a page before it penalizes you for it in its rankings. Top
How do you decide what keywords to use? One good suggestion is to ask a group of colleagues or friends to submit keyword suggestions for your site. Try to end up with 30, and then give that list to the same group and have them rank those. Another idea is to look at similar or competitor's sites and see what they use. Top
A meta tag is quite different from other HTML tags. It has no effect on how the page looks. There can be many of them, each one containing information as defined by its NAME and CONTENT attributes.
They reside in the HEAD section of the page. They are intended to provide information about a page without showing it in the browser. The type of information can vary. What we're interested in are meta tags with the NAME attributes "keywords" and "description".
After the page title, other page text is where search engines look for keywords, particularly near the top of the page. Because meta tags are in the HEAD area of an HTML page, they are often found by the search engines.
It's best to see an example of how it's used. Check this example site (say "Cheese!". Now look at the code. You will see the meta "keywords" there. You will also see the meta "description" tag. Top
Keeping the Cheese site open, open up another browser window (CTRL-N) and go to the AltaVista search engine. In AltaVista, enter the word "cheese". See what you get. You will probably see near the top of the list of sites: Cheese.com.
Note the words AltaVista uses for the link text and to describe the site. The title of the page itself is used as the linking text to the site. Note the description underneath the link. It probably matches the meta tag description on the page. That's how it often works. Top
More tips on how to prepare your site for search engines
Similar to search engines, and often located on the same page, are "Directories". These list web sites by category. Often the web sites listed are chosen by people rather than keyword searches. Top
Another way to have search engines find your site is to go direct to the source, the search engines themselves, and submit your URL directly to them. Most sites allow you to submit your site using a submission page.
Although this increases the chances that you will get your site listed, it is no guarantee that it will be listed any time soon. It sometimes takes as long as 6 months for a submitted listing to show up. Here's a typical search site's (Lycos) submission page.
Submitting your site to lots of search engines
can be a lot of work. You can pay someone to
submit your site to various search engines. Submit-it.com
submits your site to more than 400 search engines,
directories, and announce sites. Enter the information
once and it takes over from there. Cost: about
$30 per URL. You can also pay to find out what
your site's ranking is with various search engines.
Look at Position
Agent.
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Search engine web sites are such popular resources that most of them contain many other options for visitors. These sites are called "portals" of which Yahoo is a prime example. Portals offer oodles of options to choose from other than merely doing searches. Top
© 2004 Dan Vaughan