Search Engine Tips

1. each search engine has their own restrictions on site submissions

• some will allow several pages from the same site to be submitted
• Some only allow the first page to be submitted
• Some allow regular submissions of the same site
• some don't like repeated submission of your site, and will ban you from submitting

  Before submitting your url again, it's wise to check each search engine for their policy.

2. for best placement, ensure each of your pages have meta tags.

• a meta-tag generator can be found here
• the description tag is what shows up on the search page when someone conducts a search. Try to include key words where possible.
• The keyword tag should consist of words about your page. A good way to find keywords for your site is to imagine how people will find your site. If you have a clipart site, then someone looking for clipart could type in 'clipart', 'free clipart', 'images', 'pictures', 'graphics', 'web clipart' and so on. These are your keywords.
• Some search engines look for relevance of your keywords. This means they take those keywords and search through the body of your page for them. If they don't find them, they figure you're trying to pull a fast one and use keywords that aren't related to your site. The more repetition of keywords on your page, as well as consecutive keywords (such as 'welcome to my free clipart site) shows that your page is rich in 'keyword content'.
• Make different meta-tags for each page. I've found this is about the most effective thing you can do with your tags. You could dump all of the keywords which relate to your site in the tags, but most times NONE of them will show up on all of the pages. If you have a clipart site with a page of 'nature' graphics...as well as using your basic clipart keywords, include keywords of the TYPE of graphic that's on that page. The extra keywords might be 'trees, flowers, ocean, nature, garden, floral', that kind of thing. You need to be able to grab the average surfer that's looking for something specific, and chances are if someone types in 'free nature clipart' your site will show up fairly high on the list.
• use the 'alt' tag for images (<img src=pic.gif alt='describe the picture'>). Within these 'alt' tags, try to use keywords in the description (as long as it is fitting with the picture!). Search engines read them.
• Give each page on your site a title. I don't mean the one that shows on the page. I mean the one you set between the <title> tags in the head. The one at the top of the browser. If the name of your website is descriptive of your site...use that first. For example, the title for http://www.freeclipart.com could be 'Free Clipart - nature graphics'. The titles are also a key item with some search engines.

3. put a stats counter on each of your pages

• you have a counter on your main page of your site, that will track all visitors...right? WRONG! With each of your pages being crawled by search engines, and different keywords on each page...a visitor is most likely to go to any page on your site, without going through the main page. I know my websites get more hits to the individual pages than the front page. Don't be disappointed with your website traffic unless you can track your WHOLE site...you might be surprised! If you don't already have a counter that will track each page, check out TulipStats WebStats for a free counter.

Site Stats
Visitors Pageviews Total: 3,981,949 Total: 11,850,838 Today: 2,770 Today: 5,941 Yesterday: 3,221 Yesterday: 7,102 Past Month: 99,851 Past Month: 220,162 3,001 visitors in the last 24 hours This page has been visited 13,936 times There are currently 23 visitors online click to see where most people online at once: 77 visitors on 04/05/2007