| One of the most frequently asked questions I've seen in webpage building newsgroups is, "Why doesn't my page show up in the search engines?"
There is a conciderable amount of work to prepare a web site to be submitted to the many search engines such as AltaVista , Excite, Google, Hotbot, Lycos, Webcrawler, Yahoo!
Yahoo and Excite are now charging for the review or submission to their listings.
We are presenting an review of those things that are needed to prepare a web site for submission. By paying attention to some of the ideas presented here it may increase your chances of getting listed at many of the search engines. It can be a lot of work, but you will be rewarded with more hits.
Disclaimer: These are merely suggestions to help you get listed at various search engines. We cannot guarantee that any of this will work. All of these search engines may not accept any submission for a variety of reasons.
Building a well constructed page takes team work between the developer and the owner of the web site! We don't submit your site until we feel it is ready. Focusing on a single topic makes a web site stand out. If you have a page about poetry, dog grooming and Pearl Jam, your page will probably get lost in the search engines. Make your site the best you can. Avoid long downloads, especially on the main page. Make it easy to get around and find your way back. Web sites need updated often. Use meta tags and a descriptive title.
Meta tags are a set of hidden lines of text describing your business that are read by the search engine's "spiders" that enable the listing company to list and properly index your product or service.
It is a good idea to have proper "keyword" and "description" meta tags on your page for the search engines that use them. (Yahoo! and Lycos ignore meta tags. Excite only uses the description tag.) You should use lower case for your keywords because most people search with lower case anyway. Some search engines are case sensitive, but most are not.
Yes, it matters what you put between the title tags on your main page(s). If you have a U2 page, don't put something like "My PopMart Photo Page" as the title. Use "Photos from U2's PopMart Shows" instead. Otherwise your page may get overlooked if someone uses "U2" as a keyword in their search, or your page may end up further down the list of all the U2 sites. Also, the search engines generally list your page under your chosen title so think about how you want someone to see your page if they find it in a search engine. Do you want someone to see "Bill's Cool U2 Page"? Or "A Complete History of U2's PopMart Tour"? Be descriptive.
Do not use repetitious keywords in your meta tags. Do not repeat the same keyword or variation of that word more than three times in the meta tags. Do not hide text in your document by using a font color that is the same color as your background color. Do not put repeated keywords in comments tags. Many of the search engines will ignore your submission if you use these "spamming" techniques.
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