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Many webmasters submit their site to search engines but find that they are unable to get a good position. There are many ways to improve your chances of attaining a top, or at least good, position by making your site search engine "friendly." Knowing more about how search engines operate will make you more effective in achieving positive results.

Types of Search Engines
There are generally two categories of search engines:

1. human-edited and
2. spiders.

Human-edited search engines are, as the name implies, organized and controlled by human editors who determine suitability and placement of listings within the database of web sites that they maintain.

Examples of human-edited search engines include Yahoo and the Open Directory Project. Short of selecting a general category (or being a mind-reader), there's not much you can do control how your site will be placed in these types of search engines.

The other type of search engine, the spider, is a completely different animal and is the subject of this document. The majority of search engines use spider technology and it's with them that proper design of your web site can have the most impact.

How Search Engines Operate
Search engines scan the documents in web sites using a special type of program called a "spider" or a "robot". This is essentially the same as a web browser except that there isn't a person looking at the pages. Instead, the software examines the HTML code in the documents and assembles lists of keywords, special tags, and hyperlinks to other documents.

The software is called a "spider" because it traverses the hyperlinks in the documents it reads to locate and scan other documents in your site. Because of this, it's generally not necessary to submit each page in your web site to the search engines since the spiders will "crawl" your site to find each document on their own. Some spiders will only search a few levels deep, so it's often safe to create a "site map" page on your site that contains links to all the other pages.

Getting Started
The first step toward improving traffic to any web site is to examine the top-ranking sites on search engines for keywords strategic to your product or service.
One of the last steps is the proper submission of your site to the search engines.
The middle steps (search engine ranking and optimization) are the subject of this document, and are essential in order to obtain a coveted place among the top listings in search engines. The entire process is part of larger topic known as web site promotion.

Though there are no secrets, the process of building web sites that are attractive to search engines is as much an art as it is a science. By following the methodologies described here you'll beat your competition in obtaining high rankings for your web pages. You should be aware that search engine work can be tedious, and that results are often slow to develop. With steady, monthly maintenance you should be able achieve measurable results over a period of six months or so, perhaps less with a little luck. However, if you neglect your monthly maintenance you risk losing your work.

For the major search engines, placement is affected by META keywords and text that appears near the top of the page. By examining what works for the top-ranked pages, you can get an idea of what to do with your own site. Careful selection of important keywords is often all that's needed. That aside, we've assembled the following valuable information to help you make the most of your efforts and achieve top rankings for your web sites.

1. Get your own domain name.
Many search engines limit the number of daily submissions they'll accept for a single domain. If your site is hosted on a shared domain (such as a mall, community, or free web hosting service) you may have a hard time getting it listed. In addition, should you ever decide to move your web site, you'll have to start over with submissions unless you have your own domain name. Having your own domain name is absolutely essential.

2. Use an automate program to monitor your site's position.
Ranking results change daily due to competition, new web sites, technical problems in the search engines, etc., so maintaining a good position requires constant monitoring. When shopping for software, choose an application that can search the search engines to report precisely where your site is listed, not just one that submits to a large number of search engines.

3. Subscribe to newsletters and stay informed.
There are numerous user groups and web sites devoted to the topics of website promotion and search engine optimization. Join email discussion groups and news groups. The Resources section at the end of this document contains links to many useful sites.

4. Know your competitors.
Visit search engines and perform searches using keywords you think other users might enter to find web sites similar to your own. Visit the top-listed websites and write down their URL's so that you can keep track of them.

5. Choose your strategic keywords.
What words do you think people will use to search for web pages like your own? Generally, your strategic keywords will be a phrase of at least two words because there are usually too many relevant sites for a single keyword. Be creative and try to come up with words that a person might use if they'd never heard of your web site or company.

6. Develop strategic relationships an reciprocal links.
Some search engines factor popularity into their formulas for determining rank, determined by counting the number of other web sites that have links to your web site. The more sites that link to your site, the better. If you find a site that links to one of your competitors, contact that site and ask them to insert a link to your site as well. If you find a web site related to your market, contact them to establish reciprocal links.

7. Participate in banner exchanges and web rings.
Participating in targeted, industry-specific programs for exchanging banners or links with other sites can be a great way to pull in targeted traffic.

8. Create a site map page.
Spiders like long lists of hyperlinks. Make it easy for spiders to crawl your site by building a page of links to other pages in your web site and submit that page (sometimes referred to as a crawler page) to the spider-capable search engines instead of your usual home page. Include a link to your site map page on your home page as well.

9. Avoid overloading pages with identical keywords, or keywords unrelated to your site.
These forms of spamming can be detected by many search engines and are a fast way to get a site blacklisted.

10. Avoid keyword repetition.
Some search engines will interpret adjacent, repeated keywords as spamming.

11. Choose a reliable ISP to host your web site.
Search engine spiders periodically revisit links in their databases. If your site is temporarily inaccessible, it could get dropped from the search engine database entirely. This is another good reason to use an automated software program to monitor your site's position in the listings.

12. Avoid using text with the same color as the document's BODY BACKGROUND color.
If your page contains reversed-out fonts on a solid men background, make sure the COLOR attribute of the fonts used is different from the documents BODY BACKGROUND color. A common trick on many pornography sites is to insert hundreds of keywords using the same foreground and background colors so that they're invisible when displayed by a web browser, but still "seen" by a search engine spider. Most search engines are aware of the technique and will not add such documents to their indexes.

13. Use different keywords and content for each page in your web site.
The goal is to have at least one of your pages appear when a web surfer performs a search, so have each page contain different content. Have the most common words appear at the top of your pages as much as possible.

14. Place important keywords in the <TITLE> tag of your documents.
Failure to put strategic keywords in the page title is a main reason why many otherwise great sites are poorly ranked. Avoid using generic phrases such as "home page", or "product information". Be specific about your products or services. Try to keep the length to 4 words or less.

15. Use keywords in your URL.
Using a keyword in your URL will improve relevancy on most search engines. For example, give directories and documents in your site meaningful names
(e.g., http://www.yourcompany.com/raingear/umbrellas.html).

16. Include misspelled words in your keywords.
Many web surfers misspell terms in their searches, so include variations of important keywords with common misspellings.

17. Use META tags.
Most search engines give extra weight to keywords that appear in meta tags.
Your site should have the following two meta tags:
<META NAME="description" content="A description of your page goes here - change this for every page">
<META NAME="keywords" content="keywords, that, you, hope, your, viewer, will, use, to, find, your, site, go here, separated, by, commas">
Note that it's not necessary to include commas between the keywords. The "keywords" tag can include up to 1,000 characters, but avoid repeating words more than two or three times.

18. Use the same keywords in both the META tags and the body of your document.
This will help prevent search engines from interpreting your site as spamming certain keywords.

19. Avoid META REFRESH tags.
Many search engines won't follow refresh tags to load the next document. If your site uses a splash page that opens the main home page, submit your main home page instead of the splash page.

20. Shuffle the sequence of META tag keywords across different pages and in ALT tags.
Some search engines implement spam-detection software that works by looking for long string matches.

21. Avoid words used by adult sites or spam sites.
For example, avoid words like "exotic" that brain-dead search engine spiders or child filtering programs might use as an excuse to label your site as containing adult content.

22. Consider every page on your site as a potential entry point.
Search engines constantly change their indexing algorithms, which can cause pages you never thought to be important to suddenly show up in the listings. Include navigation links on every page so that visitors can quickly find the rest of your site.

23. Use questions in your documents.
Many people type text into search engines as if they were talking to a person.

24. Use HTML comments to remember keywords in your documents.
<!-- Place your keywords here, they won't be displayed by browsers -->
Note that some search engines look for long repeated strings of characters, so don't simply copy your META keywords. Instead, a good technique is to shuffle the order of the words or construct sentences, even if they're grammatically incorrect, to disrupt the pattern-matching mechanisms.

25. Use the HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes with images.
Doing so allows the browser to display your text immediately without having to wait on the images to load. While this won't necessarily affect how search engines index your site, it will definitely make your visitors happier and can prevent an impatient visitor from leaving before your page fully displayed.

26. Test your keyword s using Infoseek.
Infoseek allows you to submit once a day and is usually fairly quick (from days to a couple of weeks) about adding pages to their index. Adjust your keyword usage and placement. Then submit your site to Infoseek. Monitor the results by performing test searches then tune your keyword usage and repeat the process. Once satisfied that your site is responsive for several different keyword searches, go ahead and submit it to the rest of the search engines on your list.

27. Update your site often.
Some search engines appear to give preference to sites that are "fresh", determined by the date and the last submission.

28. Don't resubmit if you're already listed well.
Resubmitting to a search engine on which you've already got a good position is an invitation for problems. All it takes is a temporary glitch in the Internet for your site to be inaccessible when the spider tries to contact your site, which will cause you to get dropped from the index. Unless you feel you've got a good chance to improve your position, leave it alone. If you're using an automated submission program, choose one which uses "search and submit" technology instead of a simple "shotgun blast" approach.

29. Wait two to four weeks before resubmitting.
Due to the large number of submissions received, most search engines are fairly slow to process submission requests. Some can take as long as eight weeks. You should also be aware that search engines regularly discard submission requests without processing them. If your site doesn't show up in two to four weeks, resubmit it. It may take several submission attempts for your site to become registered.

30. Make your pages load quickly.
Visitors will leave a page before it displays if it takes too long to load. Keep images small. It's often a struggle to balance attractive design with fast load times, but bear in mind that most web surfers stay on a page for less than 30 seconds.

31. Check your pages for HTML coding errors.
There are several commercial programs and internet web sites offering HTML syntax validation.

32. Avoid frames.
Frames look nice, but most search engine spiders don't handle them well.
Furthermore, if your pages do get indexed, visitors will likely be sent to the individual frame page but without the navigational frame. If you do use frames, be sure to include meta tags, keywords, and descriptive text in the frameset document which loads the other frames in your site.

33. Use the NOFRAMES tag.
We recommend that you avoid the use of frames. However, if your site does use them, be sure to include the NOFRAMES tag to include content similar to that of your meta tags and title.

34. Avoid Java links.
Using Java to activate hyperlinks in your pages requires a JavaScript interpreter, which most search engines to not have. If you have such links in your documents, be sure to include regular text versions of the hyperlinks some-where on the page.

35. Be careful with dynamically generated pages.
Some search engines will not index pages detected as being dynamically generated, such as those with document names ending in .cgi, .asp .php, etc.

36. Test your site for broken links.
Fix broken links before you submit to the search engines.

37. Spell-check your pages.
You wouldn't accept typos or grammatical errors in your company brochures or business cards, so don't accept them in your web site either.

38. Answer email messages promptly.
Customers don't like to be kept waiting, especially in the pre-sales phase of contact. Studies have shown that people are much more likely to purchase when their questions are answered quickly, before they're distracted by outside forces or find a competing product.

39. Set up commonly accepted email addresses.
In addition to your regular email address, you should have your ISP set up the following email addresses for you :
support@yourdomain.com
info@yourdomain.com
webmaster@yourdomain.com
sales@yourdomain.com
These addresses can all forward messages to a single account if you wish, but it's important that users be able to send messages to these addresses and get a response.

40. Promote your URL in your daily activities.
Your URL is a valuable asset that lets others know your company is on the internet. Use it and your email address on business cards, stationary, and traditional advertising.

41. Place your phone number prominently on your web site.
It's hard to believe, but even large companies such as major airlines forget this one. Make it easy for your customers to contact you by displaying your phone and fax numbers in more than one place.

42. Avoid using counters.
Unless your site gets millions of hits, a counter will only make your site look like it's not getting enough visitors.