In this article we will go over some basic, as well as some advanced tricks you can use to improve your sites listings on the search engines. These are proven methods that will work if followed properly.
Find out which search engines you should be concentrating on, how to get listed in those search engines, and possible reasons why you may not be succeeding in getting good listings.
We will discuss the importance and use of Meta Tags, and other good ways to have the search engines successfully spider, index and list your website.
Getting listed higher on search engines is not easy. Getting a high listing without Meta Tags is impossible.
Let's go over why they are so important to your site. When you submit your site to Google or many of the other search engines that use spiders to index sites, they only ask you for your URL. They then send a spider to crawl your website for all the other pages and details. The very first thing this spider looks for is Meta Tags.
If you do not have your Meta Tags in place, the spider will move to the text on your page, which can result in a crappy site description and no keywords. This would drastically decrease your ranking with this engine.
Here are the basic meta tags and what they do:
HTML Code:
<meta name="TITLE" content="What you want to appear at the top of browsers.">HTML Code:
<meta name="DESCRIPTION" content="This is a description of your site. Use keywords here also, but keep the description under 1,000 characters.">HTML Code:
<meta name="KEYWORDS" content="This is where you list all of the keywords for your site. Make sure there is a space between each keyword and DO NOT repeat keywords more than 5 times.">HTML Code:
<meta name="OWNER" content="Put your email address here.">HTML Code:
<meta name="AUTHOR" content="Put your name or company name here.">HTML Code:
<meta http-equiv="EXPIRES" content="">HTML Code:
<meta http-equiv="CONTENT-LANGUAGE" content="En">HTML Code:
<meta name="RATING" content="General">HTML Code:
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="index,follow">HTML Code:
<meta name="REVISIT-AFTER" content="14 days">The 2 most important Meta Tags are keywords and description, these are the ones you should spend the most time and research effort on.
Keywords
This tag is the best of all Meta Tags. Keywords are very important, especially when submitting to the engines that use spiders or robots to crawl your site. Keywords can be a single word or short phrases. Go to a few different search engines and search for a website similar to your site using different keywords. Look at the top results of your searches and keep track of the sites that match yours the most.
Go to these sites. View their source and their keywords tag. This should give you a good idea of some of the keywords you should be using. DO NOT steal their meta tags. But use them to get your own ideas from. DO NOT repeat your keywords more than 5 times. Search Engines treat repetitive keywords as spam and can automatically reject your website and even block you from being listed. Always list your most relevant keywords first as thats where most traffic will come from.
Description
When you do a search and the results are returned, what do YOU look for?
Think of this when you write your description. You want to know what the website has and what the website can do for you. Nobody cares to see: This site rocks, visit it now!! Rather than a long tedious description, use a succinct two or three short sentences about your website.
In the two or three sentences, use highly relevant keywords! If you are not sure how to write your description, do a search for sites similar to your website. Find the top sites listed and view their meta tags! Find the ones that stand out. Use these as a starting point for yours. Do NOT copy them. But get ideas from them.
Sometimes, people submit their site to the search engines hundreds of times and still not get accepted or listed. Don't worry though. Just follow the directions that this book gives you and you will be on your way to a listing.