 Choose a Right Title
First of all, make sure each page of your site has a descriptive title. Because search
engines usually give the most weight to the page's title, you should place a descriptive
phrase between the <title> tags. For best results,
however, keep it in 200 characters and to-the-point. Also, since search engines return the
title as the search results, your HTML title should be both descriptive and attractive.
For example, the following title describes well the site, and therefore is a good choice:
<TITLE>Dynamic Web
promotion software - submit your web sites to 1000+ major search engines.</TITLE>
<META> tags
You can control how search engines catalog your site with <META> tags. Not
all search engines make use of these tags, but using them will definitely improve your
position in those that do. All <META> tags should be placed within the
<HEAD>...</HEAD> portion of the document.
The <META> description tag lets you specify a short summary about your web
site. This tag should clearly describe what one can find at your Web site. Here's an
example:
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="#1 best selling 5 star award winning
web promotion and site submission software. Increase your web site traffic by submitting
your sites to 700+ search engines.">
Some search engines limit the description to 200 characters. To be on the safe side, make
sure your description does not exceed 200 bytes (characters). If you do not use
<META> tags to describe your site, the Web page description will be derived from the
first 200 characters in the HTML <BODY>...</BODY> portion. Also note that
there should be only one <META> description tag per page.
The <META> keywords tag lets you specify a set of keywords that a search
robot should give precedence to when cataloging the page or how people can find your web
site. Here's an example:
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="web promotion, site submission,
web advertising, increase traffic, promotion software, web site promotion">
The keywords can include up to 1000 characters of text. Be sure that the
keywords you choose are relevant to the contents of your page. Note that the keywords are
used in the indexing process but will not display on your Web page or on a search response
page. Try to incorporate singular and plural cases of words, as well as active and passive
verbs. Also make sure your keyword list includes both general and specific words related
to your site. You rarely want to target a single keyword, because, with the billions of
words indexed on the Web now, one word simply won't cut it. Always use phrases, not plain
words, in your list.
Frame
Sites using frames should definitely make use of <META>
tags. The main HTML file contains the <FRAMESET> tags, but fails to provide
robots with any real useful information about the Web site. Therefore, you should utilize
the <META> description tag to provide a description summarizing the site's contents.
If JavaScript (or any other scripting language) makes up the first several hundred
characters on your page, you should use the <META> description tag so your site
comes up with a meaningful description in search results.
Web Site Contents
Search engines rely mostly on word density (frequency relative to the total size of the
page) or distribution (how well the word is spread throughout the page). Some search
engines even give precedence to text near the top of a Web page, so make sure you place
the most important stuff at the top. Furthermore, search engines that do not support
<META> tags use the first 200 (or 250) characters for the site's description, so the
first paragraph should describe/sell your service.
Use <Hn>...</Hn> for headers, rather than the <FONT>...</FONT> tag
definition. Some search engines consider header text particularly important.
Image Description
If your site mainly consists of images, you should use the ALT
attribute to
describe each image. Most search engines index the ALT attribute in the <IMG> tag.
The following HTML definition shows how to use this attribute:
<IMG SRC="image.gif" HEIGHT="486" WIDTH="60"
ALT="Web
Site Promotion">
SPAM
The overuse and repetition of keywords may result in a lower
relevancy score and possible omission from some search engines. Most search engines count
only the first few occurrences of a keyword or phrase, and some even penalize you for
repeating words to improve your site's ranking. Infoseek and Lycos are two search engines
that penalize sites that are suspected of repeating keywords, and Altavista will disallow
URL submissions from those who spam the index. Some search engines penalize your site if a
keyword is repeated more than three times.
Don't try to fool a search engine by using the phrase "web promote" three times,
and the phrase "web promotion" another three times. Search engines are smarter
than that, but they still aren't smart enough to associate "promote" with
"promotion."
General Rules....
- Most of the engines have choosen not to keep up and can not
spider frames sites. Make NOFRAME sections in web pages.
- Always make sure your web site is completely finished, spell
checked, online and working properly before attempting to get
indexed. One of the most common problems people encounter in getting their web site
indexed is due to a spider not being
able to reach the URL for indexing. Make sure your web site is up and responding.
- Alta Vista and some other search
engines, will index all words in your document (except for comments), and will use the
first few words (e.g. 250 characters) as a short abstract to serve back. It is possible
for you to control how your page is indexed by using the META tag to specify additional
keywords to index, and a short abstract.
- First paragraphs of the text are the most important for search
engines. Brainstorm with friends and colleagues, etc. and put
the most important keywords into a carefully crafted paragraph at the start of your HTML
document.
- Make sure that the HTML code is using the proper tags in the
proper places (called validating your HTML). Most search engines do not tolerate invalid
HTML code, that is, if your code contains invalid HTML tags most search engines will not
index your web page or worse yet, not index you correctly.
- Most search engines can take up to 3 to 4 weeks before getting
around to indexing your web site. Be patient. Keep track of when you asked to have your
web site indexed and check often. Requesting to be indexed over and over again will not
help speed up the process.
- Alta Vista uses a case sensitive
algorithm. What this means is that typing in "PROMOTION" will give you a
different result from "Promotion".
- Excite does not take advantage of
Meta tags, they do however look at the words in the Title of your document. Excite may
take as long as 4 weeks to index your web site, so be patient and check often.
- Because of the 70-80% information searchers find in the
Internet by the main search engines, the main way to attract visitors to web site is the
high ranking in the main search engines. Before submitting your site to the search engines
and directories, spend some time reading about how to write your title,
meta tags and the
first few paragraphs of each page to obtain better ranking. After submitting your web
site, you should periodically review your ranking in the search engine listings by the key
phrases.
- To improve or maintain position of your web site in the main
search engines, you may need to rewrite pages, add new content and additional web pages,
change your description and keywords, etc. If you need to learn HTML to do this, do it
because the reward is worth the effort.
|
