ARTICLE 1

Getting the most from submitting your web pages to the Search Engines.

By; Thomas S. Plummer - Owner I5NET

Once you have created your web pages you will probably want to list them with the Search Engines as it is the easiest (cheapest for now) way to attract visitors to your site. But what keeps the IT professional web page designers in business is knowing the little things that make their submissions more successful than the average user. By following the tips included in this article you will increase your ranking with the search engines significantly.

Recently I wrote an e-mail to a friend who is finishing up his e-commerce website and is starting to think long-term. Needing to attract new people to his website, he was asking about some insights about how to get the most from his search engine submittals. The letter I wrote in response went as follows:

Peter;

I found out some more information about how the search engine spiders work
and there are a few other things you want to emphasize in the META Tags. The
three most important tags are

<TITLE,
keywords
Description

in that order. TITLE isn't really a META tag since it is required HTML for
all pages. This is why it is the most important. You can put up to 20
words here, but around 8 is optimum (be careful not to repeat any words more
than once or penalties will occur in the spiders). Having the TITLE tag with
good info on all of your pages is the best way to have people find you
through the search engines. ALL spiders will add this to the search
properties of your URL!!! Then most also check the "keywords" META TAG, and
some others will check the "Description" META Tag, and finally fewer others
will read the content of your site.

This is as much of the "secrets of search engines" I have to pass on
tonight! Here is what the civilsolutions index.htm file has for these
properties at the header:

<html>

<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us">
<meta name="Description" content="Civil Solutions provides Civil Engineering
Services and Develops Civil Engineering Software. We specialize in
drainage, hydraulics and hydrology. We are the originators of the CS
Drainage Studio and CS Utility Suite Software Packages">
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0">
<meta name="keywords" content="Civil Engineering, Civil Engineering
Services, Hydraulics, Hydrology, Drainage, Drainage Software, CS Drainage
Studio, CS Utility Suite, Vertical Curves, Hydrology Software, Hydraulics
Software, Software ">
<meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document">
<title>Civil Solutions- Civil Engineering, Software, Drainage, Hydraulics
and
Hydrology</title>

The items shown in bold in the above letter are the key points you want to make sure the pages you submit have in them. The above HTML header was taken from an example page that was created using Frontpage 2000.

Most people creating their own websites these days don't have time to learn or write HTML (not even the experts do it this way anymore). Most users already know how to use a word processor, like MS-WORD or Frontpage that can create web content. In Frontpage, to create this header you need to "right-click" the page and select "Page Properties", select the "Custom" tab, and insert them into the user variables. Frontpage will NOT automatically create these important elements for you. You will need to add the variables "description" and "keywords" and the appropriate content. To edit the <TITLE variable, edit the content of the "General Tab" under page properties.

Other page editing and publishing applications have the similar features to create this content. Or you can simply edit the HTML code directly in the format outlined above.

Another good example would be to view the source of the page you are currently reading ("right-mouse" click and select "View Source" in IE 5.0). Adding the elements described herein takes less than a minute per page, but it can make the difference between a successful site and a lonely site.

We hope this information helps with your Search Engine Ranking and helps to deliver people to your site.