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[A232]Add Your Site To Search Engine

by Meridith Berk, Mer

Once you have chosen your domain name, registered it, bought a hosting and created your basic web site it is time to make sure your site and each individual page are prepared for search engine “spidering”. Spidering is the colloquial name for the act of the search engine programs following links throughout the web looking for and cataloging website pages.

Page Names:

The name of each page should not only describe the content of that page but should have a search term oriented name. If the page on your site had to do with the advantages of living in Houston, Texas you may want to call the page something on the order of “houston-living”. This way as the search engine “spiders” search the Internet for website content to display they will know what this page is about.

Site Map (For Visitors):

You should create a separate page linked from every page of your site including your home page. Call it sitemap.htm or sitemap.html. On this page you list, in some logical manner, every page on your site with hyperlinks to each page. The links should contain the search term that is emphasized for that particular page. The site map serves two distinct purposes. One is for the benefit if human site visitors. If a visitor ever gets lost on your site they can always go to your site map to find the page they are looking for. The other benefit is that it ensures that the search engine robots (spiders) will not miss any page of your site.

Site Map (For the Search Engines)

A site map done for the search engines is created in a special format. Instead of the page name ending in .htm or .html this page will end is .xml. When Google, Yahoo and MSN go through the Internet looking at websites finding this kind of page helps them ensure they catalog every page of your site. It's very much to your benefit to have one of these pages on your website and this could be said to be one of the step zeroes of Search Engine Optimization.

Meta Tags:

In the header tag of each page you should provide tags that describe the page. There is some disagreement amongst optimizers as to the value of these tags. Some search engines use the information in these tags and some do not. Since any search engine can provide valuable traffic to your site it is best not to omit this step. A rule of thumb is to use the search term once in the Title Tag, once or twice is the Description Tag, and once or twice in the Keywords Tag.

Several sites offer free meta tag creators. Just search Google or Yahoo for “free meta tag creator” or “free meta tag generator”.

Keyword Density:

Use your search term once in a heading. Use it once in the url (what you named your page). Use it once in bold on the page and once in italics. Use the search term toward the top of the page and once at the bottom of the page.

The above is the basic outline of the frequency, placement and formatting of your search term on the page.

Each search engine looks for a different keyword density based on how their algorithm (software program that adjudicates the relative value and placement of web sites) is written. And these are often changed. So it is far better to follow these very basic steps and not pull your hair out trying to write pages specifically for each search engine.

That's about it for a basic outline of on-page optimizing and preparing your pages for the search engines.

When you design a website, it's easy to focus on what your visitors are going to see. What you have to realize, though, is that you're going to have another kind of visitor with a completely different agenda: they're not going to be looking at your pretty logo and they're not going to be passing judgment on your background color. What they're looking for is the content and structure of your page.

They're the search engine spiders, and they are in control of probably the largest section of your traffic. You need to please these spiders if you want your site to be successful. Here's how.

Make Your Structure Clear.

Resist the temptation to lay your page out in non-standard ways: you want it to be very clear to the search engine where the navigation is, where the content is, and where the headings are. As a rule, put navigation first in your page. Always use the heading tags (h1, h2, etc.) for headings and sub-headings.

Avoid using generic span and div tags and only making things clear to the user through CSS font sizes: instead, use every 'semantic' HTML tag that applies to your content. If you're quoting someone, use the block quote tag; if you're posting program code, use the code tag. Search engines love this.

Keep Keywords Consistent.

It's not usually worth deliberately saturating your content with keywords in hope of a higher search ranking ? the engines have pretty much wised up to this tactic ? but do make sure that your keywords appear consistently when they occur naturally. For example, for these articles, I have stuck with 'website' throughout, as suddenly writing 'web site' instead would bring down my rankings.

HTML and JavaScript.

It's worth noting that search engines read HTML, but they don't, in general, read JavaScript. That means that using JavaScript to insert text into your page is a bad idea if you want search engines to see the text. On the other hand, you might want to have just the text in HTML and insert all the other parts of the page with JavaScript: this will tend to make your page appear more focused, although you should be careful not to insert navigation links this way if you want the search engines to follow them.

Use Meta Tags.

Yes, Meta tags are out of fashion, and search engines pay no attention to them any more when it comes to ranking your site, but they're still important in one way: the Meta description tag is still often used to decide what text search engines' users see when they find your site in their results! This can be just as important as the ranking itself ? write something here that will look useful to the searcher, and you're more likely to get them to click-through. Don't forget that, while search engines are just machines and algorithms, the end result of it all does involve a human decision: to click, or not to click?

Avoid Splash Pages.

You might think it's a great idea to have a 'splash' page displaying a full-page version of your logo (or an ad) to every user who arrives at your site, but search engines really hate that. Using this trick will get you ranked far lower than you would usually be, so you should avoid it ? it's annoying to visitors anyway.

Include Alt Tags.

Any time you use a graphic, include alt text for it ? especially if there is text in the graphic. Remember that, as far as search engines are concerned, all your graphics might as well just be big black boxes. Test by removing all your graphics and seeing if your content remains relatively intact. If it doesn't, then you'll be turning search engines away.

Finally, Write Great Content.

The key with modern search engines (and, at the same time, the thing you have least control over) is how many people decide to link to your page from their page. How can you make more people link to you? Make your content useful. Make it something they'll want to quote on their blogs. Content is more King than it's ever been, and the best way to design for search engines is to make your content really stand out.

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Both Meridith Berk & Balwinder Singh are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Meridith Berk has sinced written about articles on various topics from Computers and The Internet, Credit Cards and Search Engine Marketing. Meridith Berk is one of the founders of UltimateSitePromotion.com one of the oldest and most respected Search Engine Optimizing and Pay Per Click management firms on the Internet. For more information about. Meridith Berk's top article generates over 22200 views. to your Favourites.

Balwinder Singh has sinced written about articles on various topics from Computers and The Internet. For More Free Resources visit www.thedesignbuild.com. Balwinder Singh's top article generates over 720 views. to your Favourites.