Tips for Making Your Pages Search Engine Friendly

As with many other things which are unseen, there is a lot of unnecessary mystery surrounding the use of meta-tags on web pages. The meta tags are information packets in the head portion of a web page.

Though there are several possible meta tags that may be included in the head of a web page, the ones which are most important for search engine optimization are the Title Tag, the Description tag and the Keywords tag.

The title tag is really one of the most important single things you can work on for improving your website's search engine results. Go to Google and make a search for any particular key word If you look at the top ten entries in that search you will see that all of them have this key word in the title, sometimes more than once. So when writing your title tag, it is helpful to have your keywords included in the title tag, and not only in the tag, near the beginning of the title.

Some guidelines for the title tag suggest that this tag be limited to 70-80 characters including spaces. I confess to have used more on several occasions.
The next tag that has to be done is the Description tag. Many search engines use the description tag as a way to tell the searchers what the page is about. On MSN, for example, the description of the site shown underneath the title is the description that has been placed in the description tag.


The description tag is thus important in two respects: the search engine robot searches it for keywords to "get an idea" of what the page is about, and this tag will be seen by the surfers as they scroll down through the search results. If it is an interesting and well-written description then they may click through to visit the site. So this tag should be well written but also contain the important keywords that you wish to highlight.


The last of the important meta tags relevant to search engine optimization is the keywords tag. In this tag you have a chance to list your important keywords, but this time they do not have to be in a coherent phrase as in the Title and Description. Put your important keywords near the beginning. Make sure that all the keywords used in the title and the description tags are again listed. On top of that, add prominent keywords, especially those that appear in the actual text of the page you are optimizing.

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Search Engine Optimization Tips

Meta tags alone does not give you a high ranking in the search engines listings. What you need is to combine your meta tags, titles and your content. You can have the best of keywords in your tags but you will probably not get a top listing as long as they are not present on your page.

Most of the major search engines index every word of your page and compare them to your title META description and META keywords. In fact some engines probably don't use the META keywords anymore, so that is why content is becoming even more important.

The first step in web site promotion is to identify the words people are most likely to use in a search for your site. After identifying about 5 to 10 words, write them up as your keywords and optimize the page using them. From now on these are the words you should use in your Title, META description, META keywords list, throughout your page and the ALT tags when using images.
Keep in mind that excessive repeating of META keywords could be considered as spamming by some searchengines and you might get penalized with a lower ranking for that practice. You should also mix your keywords in different combinations throughout the page and in your ALT tags instead of using the same phrase over and over again. Also remember to put your most important keywords as close to the tag as you can.

One of the most important factors to achieve a high ranking in the search engines is link popularity. It's not only the number of links to your web site that is important it's also the quality of the links that are important. A link at Dmoz or Yahoo is usually given much more weight than a link from a personal web site. Some engines are also very found of "on topic" links. Links from sites that are focusing on the same topic as your site, are known as "on topic" links.

Another important factor to consider is the use of misspelled words: Misspelled words could boost your traffic because many people are likely to misspell your keywords in a search. In a search for a site submission service, people could search for free search engine submisison, sumit, subit, search egnine submission, submition, add ULR, saerchengines, etc. and end up at this page because these words are present at the page and among the META keywords.

Search Engine Promotion For Higher Ranking - META Tags

The Title is the most important place to put your keywords, but be careful and limit the Title to fewer than 15 words including your top keywords. It's important that your Title is as descriptive as possible and that it focus on what your page is all about, for two obvious reasons.
1. This is the title that will come up in a search, and you would want to attract people, not scare them away with a lot of keywords that makes no sense. Also, if a surfer clicks on your link and the Title differs from your content he's likely to leave the site.
2. Your Title should reflect the content of your page for better ranking in the search engines. It makes your site "relevant" to your Title.

Example:
The META description is used by some searchengines as a summary of what your website is about. Put your keywords and key phrases here and make sure that they are present on the page as well. You should not use more than 200 characters in your META description.

Example:
META keywords are not used as frequently by the searchengines as they used to be, but there is no reason not to use them. Use no more than 1000 characters and separate each keyword or key phrases with a comma. Remember that each of your keywords should also be present at your page for higher ranking, and to avoid being caught for spamming.

Example:

Website Promotion

1. Search Engine Submission

Since search engines (SE) and directories account for over 80% of the traffic that a website receives, your top priority would be to make sure that your site is listed with them. However, it doesn't help to be listed if your link shows up on the 20th page of search results. Before submitting make sure that your site is optimized for the best possible search ranking.

While there are tens of thousands of search engines on the web, over 90% of the search engine referrals come from the top four search engines (see figure below). They include Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL Search. Needless to say, it is absolutely crucial that your site is listed with these giants. Although you really don't need to submit your site to them (their spiders will eventually find and index your site), it does not hurt to make sure that your site gets queued for indexing.

Although there are many online services and software packages that can quickly mass-submit your site to large number of search engines and directories for you, you should submit your site manually to the major search engines. Automated methods are susceptible to errors and glitches that may prevent your site from being accepted. If you're opting for mass submission, be wary of companies offering to submit your site to "50,000 search engines and directories". Chances are you'll be paying an exorbitant fee this service, and most of the advertised "50,000 search engines and directories" will be useless free-for-all link pages and spammers masquerading as search engines

Website Promotion - Increase Your Site Traffic.

You have created a brilliant website and now it's time to get some traffic. This small five step guide can give you some help on how to succeed with website promotion.

1. Submit your site to search engines.

This is a "must do". Before you submit your site to the engines make sure that your site is search engine optimized. After that, consider submitting your site to search engines for free, using our automatic service, or do it by hand.

.2. Submit your site to different directories.

Submitting your site to directories does not only give you more hits, it also increases your link popularity. The number of web pages linking to your site is considered an important factor by many search engines to achieve a high ranking. A link from an important site such as Yahoo is given more weight than any other link.

Submitting to directories are not as easy as submitting to search engines. You have to make sure that there are no dead links or "under construction pages" on your site. They do not accept such sites. Read more about how to add your site on their information pages below.

3. Submit your site to pay-per-click-search engines.

If you are in a hurry to get your site noticed, or if you have money to spend on advertising, pay-per-click search engines offers a perfect solution.

You pick the keywords suitable for your site, the ones you need to attract the right type of visitors to your site. Then you set a rate that you are willing to pay for each click on the keywords that you have selected. The search results are ordered after the highest bid on the searched keyword and as an advertiser you only need to pay if the searcher clicks on your link. This way, you only pay for the visitors that you actually receive.

There are dozens of pay-per-click search engines on the Internet and some can bring you a lot of traffic and some will probably not be that good. The pay-per-click search engine with most searches is without question Overture. They provide search results at several major search engines including Yahoo!, MSN, Alltheweb, Infospace, Netscape, AltaVista, HotBot, and many others.

Other major pay-per-click search engines:

• Enhance Interactive (formerly ah-ha.com)
• Kanoodle.com