PLAYING THE SEARCH ENGINE GAME

- Keyword Phrases

Identify your most important keyword phrases and design your site
around them. In our experience keyword phrases are much more
attainable than individual keywords for a high search listing.
In addition keyword phrases are more descriptive than single keywords
so they produce more targeted traffic. For example "Handmade Furniture"
is not only more descriptive than "furniture" but is also easier to
get the top spot in search results.

- Title Tags

The title tag should be the first thing after the head statement and
should say what you do, not who you are. In most search engines the
title of your document carries a lot of weight, in many they are the
most important part of your document. Think of it this way - how many
times do you think "Tamara's Terrific Teas" is searched for? A lot
less than "organic tea", so which should be in your title tag.

- Where to Be Listed

We believe that the most important place to be listed is in Yahoo! Pay
very close attention to the instructions and write a description with
zero hype if you are lucky, you might get listed. Next we suggest
getting all your pages listed in the Inktomi database that handles
the spill over search results for Yahoo! and also powers HotBot,
Direct Hit, Canada, Anzwers, and others. Finally we suggest getting
all pages listed in The Open Directory Project, AltaVista, Infoseek,
Lycos, Excite, Northern Light in that order.

- Getting into Inktomi

We've noticed that it's easier to get listed in Inktomi if you submit
your pages to Canada or Anzwers then if you try to add them to HotBot
itself. If you get them into the Inktomi database they'll show up in
HotBot searches in around 7 days.

- Keep Good Records

Where is your site listed/not listed? When is the last time you
submitted to Yahoo? Where is the majority of your search engine traffic
coming from? These are questions you really should know the answer to.
Refer logs help here, if you don't have access to them get your hosting
provider to set them up for you. If they won't - change providers,
they're that important.

- Check Out the Competition

Now, I'm not abdicating stealing another site's title, tags, etc. but
you do need to check out the sites at the top of the search engines
for your chosen keyword phrases. This can show you not only what they
are doing right, but can also give you insight into how the search
engine works. Make sure you check out the top 2 or 3, as examining
only the first result can sometimes be misleading.

- Make a "SiteMap" Page

One very simple idea is to include a page on your web site that has
links to every page on your site. This way you can submit this page
to search engines with good spiders to get all of your pages listed
without having to submit them all individually. As an added benefit
some search engines like Excite seem to favor lists of html links with
descriptive titles.

- Use those Alt Tags

At least half of the large search engines index Alt tags, if you are
not effectively using them you're loosing ground to the competition.
This does not mean keyword stuffing though - give it a little thought
and come up with alt tags that are descriptive as well as effective.
One new thing we've been fooling around with is alt tags not only for
pictures but also for hyperlinks.

- Make use of Heading Tags

A few of the large search engines rank words inside of <H1></H1> very
highly. Our recommendation is to put your keyword phrase inside of a
heading tag near the top of your page. With a little work you can
usually work it out so that it is aesthetically pleasing and if not
there is always cloaking.

* Use True Meta Tags Only.

<meta http-equiv="keywords" content="keyword1,keyword2,keyword3">
<meta http-equiv="description" content="a brief introduction to
your website">
<meta http-equiv="robots" content="index">
<meta http-equiv="revisit-after" content="15 days">
<meta http-equiv="author" content="web design firm name and URL">
<title>Keywords - your website and company name</title>

* Identify and display your real Keywords in a priority order.
The keywords must relate to your business and service scope.
Never misspell them. The secret is to review the Top 10 sites
that appear under keywords that fit your website. Study their
titles, Meta tags, keyword density, alt image tags etc. before
defining your own keywords.

* Keep Meta tag content to a maximum of 1000 characters. Most
search engines will simply ignore the excess characters.

* Avoid using words like "Free, the Best, the only" and so on to
describe your site.

* Always use your Keywords in the title of each web page.

* Use Alt tags in the first image on your website, and fill it
with several important keywords in priority order.

* Avoid using frames when designing a website.

* Use WebsiteGarage.com to do a site analysis, then correct site
deficiencies.

* Re-submit your website every two months.


Now, here's a list of things you don't want to do:

* Never hide invisible text on your website
* Never use misleading keywords in your Meta tags that have
nothing to do with the site.
* Never try scamming search engines by writing bogus site
descriptions.
* Never use the same keywords more than 3 times.

I usually spend hours identifying and analyzing website keywords and
developing meta tags for each site I design. If you really want your
website to rank high, you must study and understand the rules of
each search engine.

Yahoo, for example, has very specific rules that you must follow
in order to get listed. If your site is still under construction,
then don't submit because they never accept websites that are not
ready for viewing. If you have already submitted your site to Yahoo,
then wait patiently. It takes at least six weeks for Yahoo surfers
to review your site. If your site is well designed and has quality
content, it will eventually be listed in the appropriate categories
you have chosen. It might even take up to six months to get your
site reviewed by a real person at Yahoo. Do not keep re-submitting
your site to Yahoo. If you lack patience, Yahoo offers its Business
Express service which charges $199. They guarantee to review and
respond within 7 days. However, they don't guarantee to list your
website.

Since Yahoo receives thousands of site submissions on a daily
basis, it's said they only list sites that are professionally
designed with good and useful content. Websites using free website
hosting services or that simply have a bunch of website links are
rarely getting listed. If you are serious about your business,
get a domain name and have your website designed by professionals.
Yahoo is the most popular search engine and directory and getting
listed with them is important.

If you don't know how your website is doing, SmarTechLab.com offers
free website status analysis at http://www.SmarTechLab.com. Before
submitting your website to major search engines such as HotBot,
AltaVista, Infoseek, WebCrawler, Excite, Snap and AOL Netfinder,
you should double-check the spelling of your Meta tags and site
descriptions. If you submit incorrectly, it takes a lot of time and
effort to have errors removed from search engines. I manually
submit our clients' sites to major search engines. So do it right!
AltaVista and Infoseek recently have toughened rules on spamming.
Remember, do not submit your site more than once every 2 months,
keep your site keywords and descriptions related to your website
content and never use terms like "the best, the only, number one."

Review your site ranking about two or three months after your
initial submission. If necessary, modify your site keywords and
then re-submit.

info@pactrends.com