1- WEB PAGE DESIGN
PAGE SETUP WITH META TAGS & KEYWORDS
Including meta tags like the ones below will help your ranking in *certain*
search engines. Listing your more important keywords at the beginning
of each meta tag will increase your ranking for such searches.
<HEAD>
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="keyword1, keyword2, keyword3">
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="keyword1, keyword2, keyword3">
</HEAD>
Also, be sure to have a title in the <HEAD> portion of your page
- many of the search engines use this title for the results page of user
searches. Once again, your title should include your more popular
keywords for higher ranking
<TITLE>KEYWORD1: The site of big keyword2, and a listing of
keyword3 services </TITLE>
Note: keywords in the meta tags are not enough to get listed on the
search engines properly. Your content must fully reflect the keywords
or it is a lost cause.
Many examples have been given that capitalization/lower case and pluralization
of keywords can be important for some searches. Ie.:
row, rows, ROW, ROWS vs.
Row
A great source of keywords you may not have thought of may be contained
on your competition’s site.
Try the web site "meta medics" to analyze your usage of meta tags on
your site.
Http://www.tsmicro.com/~webmaster/set01/html
It can’t hurt to add the following tag, although its importance is questionable.
It is meant as a guide for search engines so they revisit your page during
a certain duration.
<META NAME="revisit-after" CONTENT="15 days">
Another debate is over the caching of your web site: to disallow
people’s browser’s from saving your site to their hard drive and possibly
not seeing the most up-to-date site when entered, it is suggested to enter
the following meta tag:
<META HTTP-EQUIV="expires" CONTENT="0">
FRAMES & COLORS
The use of frames in your web page documents is discouraged due to the
inability of several search engines to spider your site.
Colors make a web page pleasing to the eye - but don’t overdo it.
Be sure that at no point your background color is equal to your text color
(even when included in tables). This is viewed by most search engines
as spamming and can result in removal of your site from their index, penalization
of you entry ranking or blacklisting from the engine.
JAVASCRIPT
Watch out how much javascript you put (especially toward the top of
your html document). Each word of javascript code may be detracting
from valuable keyword space.
GRAPHICS
It is important to keep your graphics to a minimum, that is don’t let
your entire page be graphical or you’ll be giving the search engines nothing
to work with. Be sure to include ALT="" tags on your graphics’
<IMG SRC> tags. This text is usually indexable by the search engine.
It is also suggested that you rotate graphics using server side includes
(ask your isp/web host for info) to change graphics every time people enter
your site. This fresh new look is inviting and welcomes repeat visitors.
TITLES
It is suggested that you change the words in your title every 3-4 months
and resubmit to the search engines. I wouldn’t suggest this method
if you are happy with your rank, but if you are unsatisfied, it is one
approach people attest to.
CONTENT
To make sure that your content matches your keywords, it is often a
good idea to have a mission statement in the beginning of your page with
several of your keywords represented in good solid paragraphs (1 to 2).
2- SPECIFIC SEARCH ENGINE USAGE
This section includes information necessary to the webmaster for design
and submission of a site, or pages within a site. Be sure to make
note of email addresses, ranking info, url change info, spamming penalties,
and whether or not the engine makes use of meta tags.
In general - be sure that you don’t try to spam the engines or make
too much headway due to their pluses or minuses. Spamming can result
in poor ranking, penalized listings or actual page/site bans. All
very negative for a positive web business/site.
It’s generally not worth using shotgun/automatic submission programs
for the major search engines. Many problems/issues exist on this
topic - with the main argument being that its worth going step by step
with each of the top 5/10 search engines and you’ll get to see the input
areas for descriptions, etc… and also see if any errors or updates/tips
exist on entry of your listing.
YAHOO
· getting properly listed here means business – period.
· lycos is facing major backlogs and simply is accepting less
listings or a smaller percentage of listings because of this
· No meta tags supported
· many sites just don’t get looked at due to sheer volume
· actually go to your site and check for content, style and
navigation. If they like it, they’ll include it
· spam penalty
· average submit to search time reported at 4-7 weeks
· average accepted sites reported - approx 25%
· people who were accepted said the following helped get listed:
66%- root url, 41%- regional site, 12%- free web site (aol, compuserve,
tripod, geocities)
· if you face a problem submitting to yahoo, it probably isn’t
due to them not liking your site—most of the time it is due to the fact
that you just didn’t make the cut for your site to be seen. They’re
severely understaffed and realize that many good sites that they would
like in their directory don’t get looked at
· resubmit unlisted sites at a 2 week interval.
· SUBMISSION TIPS: don’t submit under construction sites,
regional submission sites may be accepted faster, pick the right category,
write a proper description including your keywords but don’t make it a
list of keywords, try to find an appropriate category with not a lot of
sites listed, each of yahoo’s 40 editors handles thousands of submissions
a week
· resubmit listing if it has been over 2 weeks and no listing
has appeared
· when resubmitting, give site description and note that it
is a repeat attempt in the comment box of submission form
EXCITE
· basis of aol’s netfind
· 3 wks for submission to show up in searches
· spam penalty
· doesn’t utilize meta tags - content is key here to winning
AOL’ers
· keywords grouped by concept - have good content/opening paragraph/mission
statement
· removal à remove & resubmit
· checking url: search for site: http://www.joesite.com/joe.htm
or http://www.joesite.com/joe/
· checking links to your site: simply enter your url:
http://www.joesite.com or http://www.joesite.com/~joe/joe.htm
· email: corpfeedback@excite.com
INFOSEEK
· submitted sites available within minutes
· keywords in meta tag boost ranking
· spam penalty
· meta tags (keyword, description, etc) supported
· description from meta tags or 200 words after <body>
· removal à remove & resubmit
· email: comments@infoseek.com
LYCOS
· 1 to 2 wks for submissions to show up
· spam penalty
· check listing: http://www.lycos.com/addasite.html
· penalizes spam by giving a low ranking
· email: webmaster@lycos.com
· lycos editors/mgmt have no way to edit the ranking of a listing.
ALTAVISTA
· 1 to 3 days for submission to show up in searches
· spam penalty
· meta tags (keyword, description, etc) supported
· description from meta tags or beginning text
· removal à remove & resubmit
· checking listing… searchà url:joesite.com
or url:joesite.com/joe/ or
url:joesite.com/joe.htm
· checking links to your page: link:joesite.com
or link:joesite.com/~joe/joe.htm
· limits max # of sites submittable to 40 per day
· email: suggestions.altavista@pa.dec.com
WEBCRAWLER
· 1 to 3 wks for submissions to show up
· keywords in meta tag boost ranking
· link popularity (sites linked to you) boost ranking
· spam penalty
· meta tags (keyword, description, etc) supported
· description from meta tags or 275 words after <body>
· removal à remove & go to dead url form
· checking listing: http://webcrawler.com/Webcrawler/Help/GetListed/Status.html
· email: support@webcrawler.com
HOTBOT
· 1 day for submitted sites to show up
· keywords in meta tag boost ranking
· meta tags (keyword, description, etc) supported
· spam penalty
· description from meta tags or beginning text
· checking links to your site/page: enter your website
and change drop-down to "links to this url"
MAGELLAN
· magellan features a search voyeur that you can watch people
enter their keyword searches: http://voyeur.mckinley.com/cgi-bin/voyeur.cgi
NORTHERN LIGHT
· 2 wks for submissions to show up
· spam penalty
STARTING POINT
· email: webmaster@stpt.com
LINKSTAR
· email: info@linkstar.com
3- Newsgroup Promotion
newsgroups are a great way to get business/hits to your website
find suitable newsgroups and don’t just post billboard ads there- it’ll
only tick people off
offer good advice on your topic/business and kindly invite people to
your site for info
be sure to have a good tagline (bottom of message where you sign off
and write email address/web url address)
4- Other Promotion Efforts
Make sure to become a member of Internet Link Exchange - the best banner
service on the web. They let you design a banner, and for every 2
showings of other banners on your pages, you are awarded with a showing
of your banner on one of their pages. Also a good way to keep track
of your website (they keep a calendar of your hits, and the number of times
your banner has been shown at other sites, how many people clicked the
banner to get to your site and a computed CTR (click-thru-ratio) of the
# of times your banner is shown/the number of times it was clicked.
Http://www.linkexchange.com
Check your server logs (ask your ISP/web host for more info on the availability
of your logs)
these logs can help you see not only how many hits you receive, but
# of page views, # of unique users and where they heard about your site
(referrers) and what search terms they punched into search engines to get
to your site.
For a list of 1200 editors who want info & press releases on new
sites:
http://www.newsbureau.com
5- Other info sources & websites
for further research
The following two websites will help you determine your rank on the
search engines for certain keywords, as well as helping you to assess your
competition’s edge/weaknesses.
http://www.positionagent.com
http://www.rankthis.com
A great information source on the current state of web search engines
http://www.searchenginewatch.com
6- Closing Info
Some final notes to get your pages up to snuff:
· include all necessary meta tags
· manual submissions to major search engines
· don’t try to spamdex search engines
· good design & navigation on pages
· choice of keywords is extremely important
· see what your competitors are listed under and how they got
there
· resubmit if you don’t get listed
· unless you’re using a mirror site to handle excess traffic,
don’t make a second copy of your site.
· when some webmasters look for their competition’s sites on
search engines and receive an error - several of them resubmit the site
to find it removed from the engine
· don’t attempt to make a fake page, submit it, and then change
it later for visitors - it will be revisited and removed and you may be
penalized or banned |
