By John Anderson
February, 2000

A search engine query often turns up hundreds or thousands of matching web pages. In most cases, only the 10 most "relevant" matches are displayed first. Naturally, anyone who runs a web site wants to be in the "top ten" results. This is because most users will find a result they like in the top ten. Being listed 11 or beyond means that many people may miss your web site. The tips below will help you come closer to this goal, both for the keywords you think are important and for phrases you may not even be anticipating.

Use Meta Tags

There are several meta tags, but the most important for search engine indexing are the description and keywords tags. The description tag returns a description of the page in place of the summary the search engine would ordinarily create. The keywords tag provides keywords for the search engine to associate with your page.

Pick Your Keywords

How do you think people will search for your web page? The words you imagine them typing into the search box are your keywords.

For example, say you have a page devoted to intellectual property law. Anytime someone types "intellectual property," you want your page to be in the top ten results. Then those are your keywords for that page.

Each page in your web site will have different keywords that reflect the page's content. For example, say you have another page about patent law. Then "patent law" might be your keywords for that page.

Position Your Keywords

Make sure your strategic keywords appear in the crucial locations on your web pages. The page title is most important. Failure to put strategic keywords in the page title is the main reason why perfectly relevant web pages may be poorly ranked.

Search engines also like pages where keywords appear "high" on the page, as described more fully on the Search Engine Ranking page. To accommodate them, use your strategic keywords for your page headline, if possible. Have them also appear in the first paragraphs of your web page.

Have Relevant Content

Changing your page titles and adding meta tags is not necessarily going to help your page do well for your strategic keywords if the page has nothing to do with the topic. Your keywords need to be reflected in the page's content.

In particular, that means you need HTML text on your page. Sometimes sites present large sections of copy via graphics. It looks pretty, but search engines can't read those graphics. That means they miss out on text that might make your site more relevant. Some of the search engines will index ALT text and comment information, along with meta tags. But to be safe, use HTML text whenever possible. Some of your human visitors will appreciate it, also.

Remember: Frames can kill. Some of the major search engines cannot follow frame links. Make sure there is an alternative method for them to enter and index your site, either through meta tags or smart design.

Submit Your Key Pages

Most search engines will index the other pages from your web site by following links from a page you submit to them. But sometimes they miss, so it's good to submit the top two or three pages that best summarize your web site.

Don't bother submitting more than the top two or three pages. It doesn't speed up the process. Submitting alternative pages is only insurance. In case the search engine has trouble reaching one of the pages, you've covered yourself by giving it another page from which to begin its crawl of your site.

Consider making a site map page with text links to everything in your web site. You can submit this page, which will help the search engines locate pages within your web site.

It can take up to a month to two months for your "non-submitted" pages to appear in a search engine, and some search engines may not list every page from your site. Search Engine Features page has the current times it takes for each search engine to add new web pages. Extended information is also available to site subscribers.

The internet has many places that offer the opportunity to submit your webpages to multiple search engines at one time. Below are just a few of the sites you can chose from.

Submit It (http://www.submit-it.com/) offers to submit your pages to hundreds of search engines, directories, and award sites, check your site for search engine readiness, and check your placement on the top search engines. There is a fee to pay but it is one of the most used services on the net.

The Website Garage (http://websitegarage.netscape.com/) centers on making your site optimized for the web. Having one of their net mechanics take a look at your site will let you know how to make it search friendly, load faster and test the performance of your site.

While some of these sites do charge a fee for submitting you site to the search engines, sites like PromoteFree.com (http://www.promotefree.com/engines.htm) will offer a way to promote to the top 20 - 30 web search engines free of charge.

Beyond Search Engines

It's worth taking the time to make your site more search engine friendly, because some simple changes may pay off with big results. Even if you don't come up in the top ten for your keywords, you may find an improvement for keywords you aren't anticipating. The addition of just one extra word can suddenly make a site appear more relevant, and it can be impossible to guess what that word will be.

Also, remember that while search engines are a primary way people look for web sites, but they are not the only way. People also find sites through word-of-mouth, traditional advertising, the traditional media, newsgroup postings, web directories and links from other sites.

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