Meta Tags? How do I get my website onto search engines?

----------_Search_Engine_Optimisation_tips_------------ wrote:

1]
The first page of a site is the most important from a search engine point of view - the text on your "index.htm" page should total about 250 words. Into this 250 words pick a keyphrase that people are likely to search on, for the instance of my site I use "online shopping directory". I use this phrase six times (these terms can also be used in hyperlinks). Also, in the instance of my site the repetition of "UK" is used. It is important to incorporate these keywords into the site for search engines to rank it accordingly.

Note: I have used heading tags <h1></h1> at the top of the page with the text 'Shops Net UK Online Shopping Directory... No.1 Shopping Online' - this indicates to a search engine spider the start of the content and includes the keyphrase.

So what have I done here?
The repetition of keyphrases has made a positive indication to a search engine that this page is to do with an online shopping directory, the repetition reinforces that.

2]
The page title - I never use more than ten words, there is little worth writing more... I repeat the 'UK Online Shopping Directory' keyphrase here, that I mentioned in point 1. On pages further into the site I use different titles that are relevant to the page category or the product I am selling.

3]
Keywords: Ideally each page should have different keywords but their importance has diminished considerably as search engines tend to look moreso at content rather than the keywords tag - so don't go to too much trouble. If you do only use a maximum of 25 keywords, it is not worth typing more as a spider will not pick all of them up after a certain threshold limit.

Also, no word should be used more than three times, otherwise the effectiveness of your keywords may be diluted.

4]
Description: Ideally each page should have different keywords but again the r importance of the description tag has diminished considerably and it is not worth going to much trouble. Limit your descriptions to around 25 words.

5]
CSS: Always place CSS in an external file and call it in i.e.
<LINK
href="http://www.website.com/css.css&quot; type=text/css
rel=stylesheet>

- if there is lots of CSS style sheet code on your site, this will cause search engines to perceive relevant text as being much further down the page, and therefore less important than it actually is.

6]
Images: always make use of the alt attribute and give images a keyword specifiic name, i.e. if you have an image of a villa in spain call the image villa_in_spain.jpg

see the full tag below...

<img src="villa_in_spain.jpg" alt="Large 6 bed Villa in Spain" border="0">

make sure that your images are also optimised for the web.

7]
Getting Reciprocal Links:
First see NUMBER 2 quote below - this is tells you how to find suitable partners.

Then, when requesting reciprocal links stay completely relevant to your own subject area (and I tend to stay Country specific aswell - since I run a UK Directory) opinions may vary on this point.

Whilst images as reciprocal links look nice, they are not as powerful as keyworded text links - I request from other webmasters to have:

'Shops Net UK Online Shopping Directory' - (or variations of this)

as it strengthens the view that search engines will have of my page(s) - i.e. lots of incoming links saying the page is to do with shopping in the UK... compounding this is the keyword density of the phrases on the homepage that are saying the same thing. It is this combination that will make your search engine positioning move up the rankings.

Hi

Getting reciprocal links is a key strategy in getting your site noticed, I thought I would share some of my techniques:-

Try this search on google for pages where you can submit your site - this is a highly effective search and will find you lots of add url pages:

example:
intitle:add+url OR intitle:submit+your+site OR intitle:add+your+site "search term goes here"

now try this one:
intitle:add+url OR intitle:submit+your+site OR intitle:add+your+site "shopping directory"

click here to do the above google search. Tip: to completely fine tune this to UK sites only - click the 'pages from the UK' radio button once at the google page and hit 'search' to refresh the results.


Then try approaching some of the directories that display categorised listings such as https://www.dmoz.org/add.html - by listing with dmoz you should expect to be listed on AOL Search, DirectHit, HotBot, Google, Lycos, Netscape Search plus other partner sites that use their search results - you will need to be patient getting listed on partner sites can happen within a few weeks to a few months.


Consider approaching similar sites, maybe sites in a different geographical location doing the same thing as you, this way creating a network. Or try to find Local interest sites i.e. your local newspapers site, or a regional directory. Find similar sites by searching the keywords you would use to find your site.