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Summary Most people find most Web sites through search engines. This means that if you want people to find your site, it had better show up—and show up close to the top–on the major search engines (rather than the 500
th site that shows up on the 20th page—which few people ever look far enough to get to). So how do you do this? First, there are no guarantees, no magic bullets or services that can promise your site will appear at or near the top of any search engine list. But by using terms related to your products or services, you can help "increase the relevancy" of your site to search engines. This will move your site closer to
the top of the list at search engines and help people find your site. A title's worth a thousand hits First, understand that each of your pages is a doorway into your site. You probably think everyone will enter your site through the home page, but, in fact, search engines can bring someone into any page
on your site. People will only enter through your doorways if you make them stand out from the crowd. To do this, you must focus each page around a particular search term. Search engines consider words in a title more "important" than words just anywhere on the page itself. Don't just include the name of your site, include details and keywords about the contents of the page itself. Look at each page in your site, and imagine how you would
summarize it in a phrase that someone might enter into a search engine. This will be the key phrase for that page. For example, imagine you run a travel agency. Your site has one page specializing in cruises so your home page title could read something like: <title>The World's Most Popular Cruise Destinations</title> or even more specifically: <title>Popular Alaska Cruises</title> Titles really need to be specific. Most search engines don't have a limit on how long a title can be. But only 70 or so characters will actually appear in the results. Another example: Your company sells cutting boards. You have a page about plastic cutting boards, one about wooden cutting boards, and a third about cleaning cutting boards. You might choose "plastic cutting boards," "wooden cutting boards," and "cleaning cutting boards" as the key phrases for each page, respectively. With the focus for each page clear, it's time to begin "optimizing" your pages for the search engines. The most
important thing is the page title. You want it to include the key phrase for that particular page. You can also have additional words around the phrase. So, for our "plastic cutting boards" page, we might end up with a page title such as: <title>Dishwasher-Safe Plastic Cutting Boards</title>
Remember, too, that browsers use page titles to create bookmarks and favorites. So avoid starting your title with "Welcome" or "The" because it will be listed (and alphabetized) with those words first. The first word in a title does not affect search engine results. Each page is unique, so it's important to title each page on your site appropriately and descriptively, rather than just using the same title for all pages on your site (a mistake many people make).
Page titles in NetObjects Fusion NetObjects Fusion automatically titles pages whatever you named them when you created them. But you can choose to have a custom page title. To do this: Next, we want to add meta tags. Meta tags are special text in
the <HEAD> section of a Web page. They don't appear on the site visitor's browser, but they are read by search engines and are used to figure out what's most important on the page. Meta tags won't guarantee that you rank well, but they can help. The meta description tag is easy to understand. This lets you control how your page is described by most of the major search engines. Take advantage of this opportunity to sell your site in your own words.
Most search engines will recognize at least the first 200 characters (which includes spaces) of a meta description tag. Don't worry if you go over this amount, but be aware that usually only the first 75 to 150 characters will actually be displayed. Incorporate your key phrase into the description, as well as other important terms. The meta description tag, like all meta tags, goes in the head area of your Web pages. Your description goes between the quotes after content=, as shown below: <head> or <head> The meta keywords tag is where you can list terms that describe the page. You'll find greater success if you look to
your page content and extract important terms that appear in the body copy of the page. Use the keywords tag to reinforce these terms. Most search engines will recognize the first 1,000 characters of a meta keywords tag, and it is fine to have a tag much shorter than this. You can separate phrases by commas, though they are not required. You can (and should) simply use a space instead, as shown below: <head> You don't need a lot of repetition. You can avoid this by combining terms, such as In this manner, I make travel do double duty. The best simple step is to drop the commas. Here's another example: <head> Avoid excessively repeating any particular word in the meta keywords tag. For example, saying "cutting board cutting board cutting board cutting board" could cause a search engine to actually downgrade your page. There are no published limits, but a good rule of thumb is not to repeat any
single word more than three times. One last word on meta tags. They can go anywhere in the head area, even above the title tag, and they can appear in any order. NetObjects Fusion gives you the choice between inserting meta tags globally, so they automatically appear on all pages
that share a MasterBorder, or on a page-by-page basis. I don't recommend using MasterBorders to put the same tags globally across the site. At the very least, you should add a meta description tag using the first paragraph of a page and no keyword tag. It isn't good to have all the pages with the exact same tags. Note: Search engines index frame-set files, so if your site uses frames, be sure to access MasterBorder HTML so your tags are added to the frame-set file. Now it's time to look at your page copy. Search engines don't "read" graphics, so the images on your pages mean nothing to them. Instead, it's only the HTML text they can understand. You want to make sure you are actually mentioning your key phrases in this text. For example, it's common to shorten a compound word after a
first reference. The first paragraph of the plastic cutting boards page may have that phrase in it, but later references might only mention "boards." Instead, it would be better to have more full references to "plastic cutting boards." You don't need to obsessively repeat. Just expand the references where it makes sense. Having completed these basic steps, you are now ready to submit your pages to the search engines. If you never submit, chances are most search engines would still find your pages. But submitting speeds up the process. At Infoseek and HotBot, you can submit up to 50 pages a day. These pages will appear usually within two days at Infoseek and within two weeks at HotBot. Submitting at
HotBot should also get your pages listed with MSN Search, as both services are "powered" by the underlying Inktomi search engine. At AltaVista, any page you submit will usually appear within two days, as with Infoseek. But unlike Infoseek, you can only submit five pages a day. If you have more than that, submit them over time. Infoseek, HotBot, and AltaVista are "instant" indexers. That means any page you submit to them usually will show up within a few days.
You can submit all your pages (within their limits) to them, which means your entire site will be listed within a few days. However, if you have a large site of 50 or more pages, you may find this to be a lot of work—and perhaps unnecessary work. That's because these services will also "crawl" your site. They list the page you submit right away. But then they return to your site and follow links from that page to other pages in your site. These usually appear within a month.
So, a good strategy with these search engines is to submit any important pages directly, then sit back and give them some time. Check back in about a month and see what they've gathered. If important pages are missing, then submit them. With Excite, you really only need to submit your home page. Excite will list that page within a week, and it will follow links from it to find other pages to list. It won't list all your pages,
but many of them should appear within three weeks. Excite also powers AOL NetFind, Netscape Search, and WebCrawler, so a submission to Excite covers you for all of these. Lycos has a tendency to list only pages that are submitted to it, so it's a good idea to submit all your key pages. There's no per day limit, though staying under 50 is probably wise. Expect your pages to appear in three to six weeks, but be aware that not all may be listed. This is also true of Excite. Where's Yahoo in all of this? Yahoo is not a "true" search engine that crawls the Web, so it doesn't care about your meta tags, your page titles, or words that appear on your pages. Instead, you need to submit a 25-word description to Yahoo that summarizes your entire site. Be sure to include important search terms for your site in this description, but don't submit a list of keywords. The description needs to be appealing,
otherwise a Yahoo editor may not list your site at all. Even with a good description, you may find that despite several attempts, you still are not listed in Yahoo. That's because editors simply don't get to all the submissions they receive. If you don't get in, keep trying every two weeks or so, until you do get in, or until you get tired. For the true search engines, there are many other tips that you may find helpful, especially if your site uses frames. To
learn more, visit the
Illustration: Ingo Fast´s Technology from
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Search Engines: How to Help Others Find Your Site
