Website Hosting Listings - Guide to search engine listings.

Keys to Gaining Top Search Engine Positioning - Introduction

Introduction

This Dynamic Document provides you with a “cutting edge advantage” over much of your competition, giving you the results that you’ve been waiting for. Don’t Skip ANY of this document - read it from beginning to end otherwise you could MISS VALUABLE INFORMATION & EXAMPLES !!!.

Imagine opening a flood of traffic to your site because YOU know all the right strategies. This document covers Everything about WEB Page Design you MUST Know to get your pages Listed at The Top, and STAY THERE !.

There are many reports on this subject, and a large number of these are either “Out of Date”, or a “pathetic 2 or 3 pages full of misinformation”. Some people have had their sites Completely BANNED from major Search Engines by following techniques recommended in other reports, without having any idea that this could happen to them !.

Utilizing this POWERFUL information will enable you to achieve Top end Search Engine Listings for ALL of your “Well Keyword Targeted” Web Pages, squash your competition, and ROCKET your sales to the Top with your listings !.

Web Design for Top Search Engine Positioning covers:

Why you should Get Your OWN DOMAIN NAME

How to gain Maximum Exposure with SITE CLARITY

How to Design Sites for Maximum BROWSER COMPATIBILITY

How to Make the Best Use of TEXT and GRAPHICS

Case Sensitivity & design issues

MISTAKES made by others with FRAMES and GRAPHICS

Why many Web Sites are MISSING POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS, How YOU Can AVOID the Same Mistakes

All about “Spamming Techniques”, How to SPAM, the RISKS and CONSEQUENCES

How to get listed at the Top WITHOUT SPAMMING

All about TITLES and KEYWORDS, the tools for making the BEST CHOICES

KEYWORD strategies you MUST to know to STAY on TOP

How the Search Engines RANK your Titles, Keywords, and PAGE CONTENTS

The TRUTH about Alphabetic, Alphanumeric & Lexigraphical Ordering

All about META TAGS, and How to make them WORK FOR YOU

How to incorporate GUERILLA MARKETING tactics into your site

Secrets which can easily DOUBLE or TRIPLE your traffic in days

Techniques to MULTIPLY your Search Engine Listings and Exposure

How to get MULTIPLE LISTINGS with the same search engine

How to write Order Pulling WEB pages

How to HIDE your WEB Page source code secrets from curious visitors

How to BEAT your COMPETITION with underhanded techniques

The things you MUST NOT DO !.

All about WEB ROBOTS !.

How to SUBMIT your Pages with MAXIMUM EFFECT !.

Other Places and Techniques to PROMOTE your WEB Site !.

SIGNATURE FILES and how to use them.

NEWSGROUPS - How to use Newsgroups and what Not to do !.

Free Links Sites and Pages - the Good and the Bad !.

Free Classified Ads on the net.

plus much,much more!!!

Print This Information - Write Your Plan !.
===========================================


  Print out this information and read it several times.
Use it to help you plan your strategy for getting your site Listed at the
Top of the Major Search Engines. Once you have your “WRITTEN PLAN”
procede to implement it !.

	YOU MUST HAVE A WRITTEN PLAN !.
        ===============================

Always Write Your Plan, and go over it several times before you
try implementing it. Failure to do so can result Miserable Failure !.

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Keys to Gaining Top Search Engine Positioning - Overview.

Overview

There are many search engines on the WWW now, and new ones are coming on line all the time. The well established or major search engines are continually jockeying to gain higher rankings in “The Search Engine Wars” To this end, they are continually striving to make their engines better, or more appealing than their competition. This means they may change the way their engines appear, index documents, accept submissions and so on. So, when you manage to get your Web Pages into Top Search Engine Positioning, you then have the challenge of keeping them there !.

Content of your Web Pages which determine how they will be indexed or rated, varies between the search engines. So YOU as a Web Page designer must understand the basics of “How these Engines Work”, so you can then plan an effective strategy to put Your Pages at the Top !.

All aspects of your Web Pages are important

, both to the Search Engines, and the Web Surfers you want to attract to your site. These aspects include standard HTML Tags such as “TITLE”, and “META TAGS”, the “Extremely Important 1st Paragraph” of each Web Page, Case Sensitivity, and relativity rankings just to name a few !. All these are well covered in this document, plus much much more.

The key to gaining Top Search Engine Positioning is “EVERYTHING COUNTS” !!!. Your page TITLE, the META TAG content in the <HEAD> section of your document, and the contents and layout of the document itself - especially the first 200 to 250 characters of visible text on each page require particular attention.

The page TITLE, “Keywords” and phrases are the basis of successful search engine positioning,

and are referred to throughout this document. Keywords and phrases should be incorporated into your Page Title, Keyword and Description Meta Tags, your Opening Paragraph (used as the Description by many Search Engines), and in Images (not the Graphic Image, but using the ALT attribute of the <IMG> tag). You will be taught “How to Choose”, and “Where and How to” use Keywords to gain the best search engine positioning you possibly can.

KEYWORD TARGETING

is in essence, the main key to successfully gaining a Top Listing Position, however, to Successfully Target the Right Keywords for YOUR site requires Careful Planning. Targeting Several Sets of Keywords should be your end goal, though trying too much all at once can be Very Time Consuming - even Overwhelming.

You will find as you venture into setting up a Web Site, and trying to get your pages listed “At The Top”, that there is quite an Art to it !. When you submit your pages for the first time, Don’t be Disappointed or Discouraged if you don’t get up the top straight away !. Very few people ever manage to get things off to that good a start. You will learn to check where you got listed, look at the top listings with the same search criteria, then redesign and resubmit !. You should not expect to design a good site that will list at the top overnight. It will take practice and patience.

As you learn, it is likely that you will end up re-designing your entire Web Site, more than once. You will find yourself thinking of new keyword sets you want to get the top listing for, and incorporate them into your site. You will find yourself thinking of new and better strategies for achieving this, which will sometimes require a good amount of site modification. This manual is designed to help you think of all these things, and provide the tools necessary to enable your success !.

DON’T Skip ANY Part of this Document !. If You Do, you will MISS IMPORTANT INFORMATION !!!.

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Get Your Own Domain Name

It is important that you get your own “Domain Name” if you want to market on the Internet effectively. There is more than one reason for this.

First of all, when you register a domain name, it belongs to you. So if you change your service provider at any stage for whatever reason (there can be any number of reasons for changing providers), you don’t have to start from scratch again - Your Domain Name Stays With You !. Your “Domain Name” can be transferred to your new service providers servers, so as far as the rest of the net world knows, nothing has happenned - your still there at the same address !. All your Web Pages can be put up on the new host “As They Are” and your e-mail addresses remain valid too, so all your “Net Communication” remains intact. For anyone who is serious about what they are doing, this is extremely important !.

The other important things a domain name does for you, are to provide recognition - pick a domain name which can be related to your company, trading name, or products !. For example, Nico Mak Computing, Inc., are the makers of WinZip(TM) , and they have a Domain Name at www.winzip.com.

Secondly, this avoids your pages having a “Tilde” (~) address like :

http://someones.server.com/~yourname/yourpage.html

One of the reasons this is now so clearly important, is that page addresses containing a “Tilde” are being “Excluded from some Directories” and search engines. This may become more the case as time goes on, and really, there are quite good reasons that some Directories and Search Engines are doing this. A “tilde” in a URL address is considered the “Mark of a Personal Home Page”. There are so many “personal home pages” out there, and many of these just get put up one month and are gone without a trace so quickly, it becomes a waste of resources for the Search Engines and Directories to bother with them. This is particularly true for the Directories which use humans to review submissions and update their directories - this takes an enormous amount of resource.

If you already have Web Space without your own domain name, start planning now to register your own domain and move to it as quickly as you can. You should make this your priority, rather than putting in a huge effort promoting your present site.

*** WARNING ***

DON’T SPAM the Search Engines when you have your OWN DOMAIN NAME established. If your Domain gets Banned from the Engines, your efforts, and your Domain Name are Wasted !.

Get your Own Domain Established, then Promote with all your Energy !.

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Site Clarity and Browser Compatibility.

Text, Graphics, and Frames.

Too many Web sites are “cluttered” with graphics, and with no support for text only browsers or users who like to leave “Auto Load-Images” turned off. Many sites use graphics exclusively, therefore losing all the would be prospects of this group (which is larger than you may think). Another BAD mistake made by many web designers is exclusive use of FRAMES. Again, people without FRAMES capable browsers often get completely ignored, not to mention ignoring requirements for the search engines !.

A Note on Frames and Search Engines.

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Q.: What are FRAMES ?.
A.: FRAMES

As stated above, FRAMES is a “NetScape” extension to the HTML Language, but unfortunately there are a LOT of NON-FRAMES capable browsers in use. Web pages that exclusively use FRAMES, simply cannot be read by any text-only or non-frames capable browser.

If a text-only browser can’t read your page, NEITHER CAN THE SEARCH ENGINES !.

FRAMES users are missing a big slice of their potential market when they ignore these facts. If you feel you must use FRAMES, provide for the search engines, and those with text only or non-frames capable browsers too !!!.

Read on to find out how.
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Correct, Maximum Use of Minimal Graphics and Keyword Targeting

Graphics should be kept to an absolute “Minimum”. Use them only where they add real value, and keep the image files reasonably small. If you need image files in the region of 10-30 Kb, then you only want 1 or 2 on a page, otherwise people with relatively slow connections will abort while waiting for your page to load. Some small images that can be very worthwile and tiny, could be Credit Card payment Logo’s. These can often be in the region of 1.5 - 3.0 Kb, so they load fast and it’s obvious to the prospect to click on the card to make payment for your product or service.

Another “Extremely Effective Use” of Small Graphic Images is not one that adds value to your page for the Web Surfer, but adds Indexing Value for the Search Engines. Your aim is to get your pages listed as high as possible under your chosen keywords. Some search engines index the ALT attribute of the <IMG> tag. Infoseek is a prime example of this. The trick here is to use a Small Graphic like a “bullet mark” as the image beside all the links on your page, and ensure you use your main target keywords in the “ALT” <IMG> tag attribute.

Read through the following section on Textual Links, and study the example to gain a thorough understanding of these concepts. Remember that you will only be successful if you fully understand All the Concepts in this Manual, and design them into your site correctly !.

Always Provide Textual Links and Descriptions

Whenever you use graphical links, always make sure there is accompanying “Text” included in the link so those with Images turned off, or Text Only browsers can get around your site. This can be achieved in part with the “ALT” attribute of the <IMG> tag. Regardless of this, you should ALWAYS Provide an accompanying “Plain Text Link”. The main reasons for this are as follows:

1 :: Believe it or not, some browsers currently in use don’t properly support the <IMG> tag “alt” attribute. Without Plain Text in the link, those people who can’t see what it is won’t follow your link.
2 :: The words used in the Plain Text link will be Indexed by the Search Engines, increasing the “Weighting” of these words. Wherever possible, this should include your Targeted Keywords for the page.
3 :: The words used in the “ALT” attribute of the <IMG> tag are also Indexed by SOME Search Engines (Infoseek for one), further increasing the weighting of those words.

You will see in the following example why it is better to forget about using a graphic to “describe a link” (e.g: a 4Kb GIF file that says the word Products), and instead use “bullet graphics” with your Keywords in the “ALT” attribute of the <IMG> tag, and in the Plain Text part of the link !.

Follow this example through and you will see how careful planning and design are required from the outset, to gain all possible advantages over your competition.

This example

uses the 2 words “Entrepreneurs Opportunities” as our targeted keywords, and a small bright graphic bullet (only 83 bytes) to highlight each link. We have to take “case sensitivity” into consideration too. Most people will search using all lower case, but you will still get some who leave their CAPS LOCK ON, or just capitalize the first letter of each word. The best strategy then, is to have fewer capitals, using mainly lower case.

Example, the ALT IMG tag attribute and Keyword Targeting:

——————————————————–

<A HREF=”http:athome.html”><img src=”bullet.gif” border=0 alt=”entrepreneurs opportunities at home”> Entrepreneurs Opportunities at Home.</A> opportunities for entrepreneurs that can be worked from home, both on or off the net. 
<A HREF=”http:netops.html”><img src=”bullet.gif” border=0 alt=”entrepreneurs internet opportunities”> Entrepreneurs Internet Opportunities.</A> internet only based opportunities for entrepreneurs.

<A HREF=”http:einfo.html”><img src=”bullet.gif” border=0 alt=”entrepreneurs opportunities - information”> Entrepreneurs Opportunities - Information.</A> information to help find the right entrepreneurs opportunity for you. 
<A HREF=”http:eadvert.html”><img src=”bullet.gif” border=0 alt=”entrepreneurs opportunities - advertising”> Entrepreneurs Opportunities - Advertising.</A> Best places to advertise your entrepreneurs opportunities.

<A HREF=”http:efinance.html”><img src=”bullet.gif” border=0 alt=”entrepreneurs opportunities - finance”> Entrepreneurs Opportunities - Finance.</A> How entrepreneurs can get finance for their projects and opportunities.

This is what the above Example Code produces

Entrepreneurs Opportunities at Home. opportunities for entrepreneurs that can be worked from home, both on or off the net.
Entrepreneurs Internet Opportunities. internet only based opportunities for entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs Opportunities - Information. information to help find the right entrepreneurs opportunity for you.
Entrepreneurs Opportunities - Advertising. Best places to advertise your entrepreneurs opportunities.
Entrepreneurs Opportunities - Finance. How entrepreneurs can get finance for their projects and opportunities.

Check This Out !

How are your Browser Image Options currently set, and what does the code (from the example above) look like ?.

Try out the following:

1 :: Set your browsers “Auto Load Images” option to OFF, load this Manual, and have a look at what the code in the above example produces. This is what others would see with Auto Load Images turned OFF.
You shouldn’t see the Red-Bullets with Auto Load Images OFF. If you can see them, try Clearing the DISK and MEMORY Caches. In Netscape this is under “Network Preferences”. If you still see the Red-Bullets, it could be due to a “BUG” in the browser code which causes images to load in the first document opened regardless of the options settings. If this is the case, follow these steps to get around the problem. Restart your browser without loading this manual, then Clear the Caches again, check Auto Load Images is turned OFF and save the current options. Then exit your browser and restart it, again without loading this manual. This time, load a different HTM/HTML file before you load this manual. Now you should have No Red-Bullets, a place-holder for the graphic, the text displayed with the IMG ALT attribute, and of course our textual link !.
2 :: Now, set your browsers “Auto Load Images” option to ON, and hit the Reload button. Come back here and take another look. If you have the “bullet.gif” file (normally supplied with this manual) in the same directory as this manual, the graphic place-holder and ALT IMG attribute Text are replaced by the Red-Bullets, and our text links and descriptions are still displayed.

The above example illustrates one of the Most Important Concepts of Web Site Design, incorporating Search Engine Keyword Targeting, Browser Compatibility, Economical and Advantageous Graphics use all together !.

In summary, using the above techniques achieves the following:

Ultimate Browser Compatibility.
Dramatically Increases Target Keyword Density by using:

Same Target Keywords

well represented in mixed case.

Same Target Keywords

in the ALT attribute of the IMG tag.

Same Target Keywords

repeated again in the Textual Part of the link.

Same Target Keywords

repeated again in the Description for the link.

Same Target Keywords

used in all these links - This is REAL Keyword Targeting !.

Proper keyword targeting like this is very important, and is a major key element to raising your pages search engine Relevance Rankings and hence their listing positions.

Highlights your links, making them Stand Out.
Most Economical Graphics Use !. The image file is very small, and is only downloaded once by the client browser. Once the browser has this file in its memory, it is simply displayed over and over without the need to be pulled down from the server again so the page will still load quickly no matter how many times you use the same little graphic !. (The supplied bullet.gif is 83 bytes)

You should now understand how this technique, used properly, takes Maximum Advantage of the Smallest Graphics to Multiply you Keyword Density !.

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Ensure Compatibility with the Widest Range of Browser Software

The above example using Textual Links will be compatible with the widest range of browsers in use. There are a large number of sites now, which only cater to those using the features in the latest graphical browsers. Many of these leave you with the bottom line of “Get the latest version here or you can’t browse this site” Some others (the more sensible ones) do provide a “Text Only” version of their site, or accompanying text in their links as in the example above.

If you have a large web site, it is easier to maintain “One Set” of pages which are able to be viewed by both graphics and Text Only browsers with ease. It is also “Better for Business” !!!. Remember this also applies to FRAMES. If you are contemplating using FRAMES, weigh up the pros and cons. Is it really worth the extra effort in design and maintenance with so many people using non-frames browsers ?.

Maybee the easiest way to weigh this one up is to answer 2 simple questions.

Q1.

Will using FRAMES gain me any exposure and sales ?.

- There is no logical reason why using FRAMES should, though it’s always possible that YOU have some unique situation where you can talk yourself into believing it will, even if it won’t !.

Q2.

Will using FRAMES loose me any exposure and sales ?.

If not implimented and maintained absolutely flawlessely to cater for text-only, non-frames capable browsers, and the search engines, the answer will most certainly be YES - YOU WILL LOSE OUT on exposure and sales !!!.

I couldn’t even count the number of sites I have “written off” due to their poor policy of “Download this browser or sod off”. Since I am usually on a Unix platform and they don’t have a Unix version of the browser linked (or there may not even be one available) the choice is obvious - I SOD OFF !!!. (There are many others on the net just like me !.)

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Site Design - General, Navigation and Home Pages

    There are many things to keep in mind when designing a web site.

How many pages should I use ?.

Use as many pages as you need, to cover everything you are trying to achieve with your site. This will vary tremendously from site to site. Don’t try to put too much on one page, for example if you sell ten different products, you will probably want a separate page dedicated to each product, with its own TITLE, KEYWORDS, and DESCRIPTION for the search engines. You may need to incorporate extra pages into your site with the primary purpose of “Keyword Targeting”. Keyword Targeting is something you will have to get a real grip on if you are going to be successful at maintaining top listing positions in the search engines. So, with the example of selling 10 different products, and dedicating a separate page to each one, you may not be able to target keywords sufficiently on any of them to get a top listing. It’s likely that you will need to supply quite a bit of information on each product to get people interested enough to buy. Due to the largish amount of information on each page, your Target Keywords which you want to have people search and find your pages by, may not have a high enough word density in your product pages to get the high listing position !.

The first place to look at targeting your Most Important 3 Keywords in this scenario would be a page that links to all your product pages. If you sell a range of “Nutritional Supplements” you may consider the following type of approach.

1 :: Choose your Most Important Target Keywords. Use common sense and the search engines to help you choose these. You want to choose keywords people will commonly search with, and that you can use in the Title, Graphics, Links, and link Descriptions.; See the sections: Title and Keywords - pay particular attention to how keywords are ranked. Also see Keyword META Tags - and Choosing Your Keywords to help you finalize your keyword list.
2 :: Having chosen your Most Important Keywords, construct your page which will contain links to all your product pages. Using our example of 10 products, and our Title & Keyword Ranking example, let’s say we have chosen the 2 words “Nutritional, Supplements”. First of all, construct your Page Title using these words. Now each of our products has a specific purpose, so we break these out and use them with our keywords “in our links to the product pages” like this.; Nutritional Supplements for Skin nutritional supplements for your skin keep you looking younger and repair damage from the inside out.; Nutritional Supplements for Hair nutritional supplements for hair promoting healthy growth, reducing split ends, sun damage, and premature greying.; Nutritional Supplements for Weight Loss nutritional supplements for weight loss helping lose weight easily while supplying all the nutrients needed for good health.; Nutritional Supplements for Sports People nutritional supplements for sports people providing all the trace elements and nutrients needed under physical stress.; etc etc etc … You Get the Picture !.; Use a graphical bullet, and the “Link Text” with the ALT attribute of the <IMG> tag too, to further multiply the density of these target keywords. Also note how “case sensitivity” is accounted for. For details and example code, see Correct, Maximum Use of Minimal Graphics and Keyword Targeting

If you have Other Sets of Keywords you want to use, then create other pages to target these. Using this same example, if your products were “Natural Herbal” supplements, you may want to try targeting these words. You could create a new page where you replaced “Nutritional” with “Natural Herbal”, making your target “Natural Herbal Supplements”.

What should I put on my Home Page ?.

Your MAIN Home page should contain some well presented information about the content of your site, and preferably some sort of giveaway like a “Download report”, or perhaps an “Email to receive” report. Using the email option with an “Autoresponder” to service requests, you can deliver the report without any effort on your part, and use your autoresponder digest to start building a database of contact information.

Provide links to all your other pages

(or main pages at least). Include compelling text descriptions (like headlines !) with each link that will draw the curious surfer to take a look.

Full contact details are essential.

You should provide a contact persons name, e-mail to link, snail mail postal address, phone and fax numbers, and if possible a physical street address. Providing the fullest details will give your site more credibility.

How should, I organize links between pages ?.

Your MAIN Home Page should NOT be your “Only Home Page” !. A Major key to gaining maximum exposure is to treat all your pages as Home Pages for whatever they contain. Every page on your site must contain a link back to your MAIN Home Page. This may seem to create a little more work in both design and submission, but if done correctly is well worth the “Multiplied Exposure” it can gain.

Treating every page like a home page really just means the following:

1): Each page has its own URL which is submitted separately to the engines and directories. Many of the search engines require that you submit each and every page you want indexed anyway !.
2): Each page must have its own TITLE, KEYWORDS, and DESCRIPTION which are customized to the contents of that page and used in the META-TAGS.
3): Each page must contain a well presented, informative first paragraph designed to make the best possible use of the search engines.
4): Each page must provide a link back to the MAIN Home Page. Appropriately, each page may contain links to other “sections” of your site. For example, if you provide “Information or Reference” pages, these may also have links to related “Products” and “Ordering” pages.

Obviously every site is different is some way or another, but the basis of good site design to gain maximum exposure through the search engines remains the same.

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Spamming - What it is and why you shouldn’t !!!.

What is Search Engine Spamming ?.

Spamming is “Using techniques to artificially inflate the rating, relevance score, or index positioning for Web pages in a search engines directory”.

This report teaches you how to spam the search engines if you want to, but BE WARNED, this can lead to PERMANENT REMOVAL of YOUR SITE from search engine indexes. Read on to find out more !.

Why shouldn’t I “spam” the Search Engines ?.

You should be very careful about using techniques which are considered “spamming” . Search engines are cracking down on spammers, and may ban your pages or even worse, ban your entire site from their directories if you persist in using these techniques.

Getting banned from the top search engines can COST YOU Considerably !!!.

BE WARNED - *** Once You Are Banned, Your Stuffed. ***.

Getting banned is expensive !!!. The bottom line ?. Lost Business, Lost Time, Lost Money, and the expense of moving your site and getting re-established. Getting re-established can mean setting up from scratch again, including obtaining new Web Space, Domain Name registration etc.

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How can I Compete with the Spammers ? - I see others getting away with it.

You CAN compete

with the spammers !!!. Great Web Page Design CAN achieve the best search engine positioning. This report teaches you the basis of good Web Site and Page Design. Good overall design will always be the best option for those offering something of value. The search engine designers are constantly striving to improve the value of the service they provide on the WEB. The current move is toward “stamping out the spammer”, so those who provide good content will be placed where they belong - at The Top !!!.

How can I spam without getting my pages or site banned ?.

You can spam the search engines without much risk if you can afford to buy WEB space on more than one server, and are prepared to risk losing it !. What you do is get some cheap space on a second server, on a month by month basis so you won’t care if it gets banned. You use this “cheap” second server for all your “risky spamming” practices, like creating fast “Pointer Pages” (client pull) loaded with keywords to send people to the pages on your main server. There is no point in trying out spamming techniques which you “know” will likely get you in hot water, but use this to see how far you can push things without getting banned.

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So why do people spam ?.

Usually because they don’t know how to design good Web Pages !!!. That’s it in a nut shell !. Have a good look at some of the trash out there on the WEB for yourself. Many of the spammers who do achieve a high search engine rating deserve to have their pages banned !!!.

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TITLE and Keywords

Everything Begins With the Title !.

You MUST start with a good TITLE for ALL your Web Pages !!!.

I cannot stress this enough, remember the title is the first thing seen by a “searching web surfer”, so if your page title doesn’t grab the surfer, they’ll skip on by !.

How Quickly do YOU Scan a List of Search Results or Links ?.

The “Unconscious Mind” SEES and RESPONDS to “Keywords” passing by quickly on a screen. Try it yourself and see how your eyes can instantly catch the “Keywords” that most interest you, even with a screenful rushing by at high speed !. You often find yourself “backing up the page” and saying to yourself, “I thought I saw that” - then proceed to click on the link !.

The HTML tag “TITLE” creates exactly that, the TITLE for your web page. You must have a good, descriptive title for each and every page on your site. The title of your page is like an “Advertisement Headline”.

Your title should be informative and use POWERFUL “Keywords” and phrases, just as a good Advertisement Headline does - it MUST attract attention. (You also use this strategy elsewhere - e.g. in the description meta tag).

The TITLE is the first thing displayed by the search engine listing,

and is usually “Highlighted” so it stands out and is easily read. When people browse the results of a search, their “Unconscious Mind” will easily pick the “Keywords” which interest them most in the TITLES. If your TITLE doesn’t GRAB the reader, then they won’t go on to read the description.

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Title & Keyword Ranking - How does a search engine rank the TITLE and KEYWORDS ?.

The Page Title should contain your “highest ranking keywords” wherever possible, without being too long. It must also “make sense”, it must not just be a list of keywords !. Most Search Engines place a big “weighting” on the contents of the page TITLE, by word count and percentage, or in other words “word density”. The same goes for your document text, particularly the text within the first paragraph (or 200 - 250 words).

So if your TITLE has 10 words, each word comprises 10% of your TITLE. If your TITLE has only 4 words, each word comprises 25% of the TITLE, so each word would “weigh heavier” as a “Keyword” in your document, and in searches. (Words like “of, the, and, for” etc. are ignored by the engines.)

Within your document text, keywords are ranked similarly. Each search engine has its own “Algorithm” it uses, but the basis of these algorithms is similar - they work on Word Density. If the text of your page has 1000 words, and your Main Keywords only appear once, the page will achieve a poor rating. If you have 3 main keywords, they appear in your TITLE, in your META TAGS, Your opening sentence of your first paragraph, in the ALT attribute of the <IMG> tag, Textual Links, Descriptions of your Textual Links, and are well placed and repeated in the pages Text, you will achieve “High Word Density” for your Keywords under which want to be found. This is what you MUST DO !!!.

See the following example TITLES and analysis.

Title - Examples

1): “Index of Nutrition Supplements for Promoting Health and Vitality”
2): “Nutritional Supplements, Health and Vitality”
3): “Nutritional Supplements”

Example 1: - contains 6 “real” words - Index, Nutrition, Supplements, Promoting, Health, Vitality. So each of these words comprise 16.66% of the Title. The 2 words “Index” and “Promoting” are quite useless words, and “water down” the weighting of the more important words in the title. Not many people are going to include either of these words in their search for “Nutritional Supplements” , are they ?. Removing these 2 relatively useless words brings us to example #2.

Title - Using Plurals, Adverbs, and Adjectives

Example 2: - contains 4 “real” words. Notice here I have changed the word “Nutrition” to the adjective “Nutritional” . This is because if someone types “Nutritional” into the search engine, the word “Nutrition” will not show up - but if they typed “Nutrition” and our Title contains “Nutritional” it will be found by the search.

Use adjectives (”Nutritional”) or adverbs (”Nutritionally”) where they are appropriate - in other words, where they fit correctly and make sense.

The same applies for using plurals wherever possible as in “Supplements” rather than the singular &quotSupplement” . If our title contained the singular, a search for the plural would not find it !. This example is definitely far better than Example #1, giving each word in the title a higher weight (25% compared to 16.66%). In general, these 4 words will then be given a higher weighting as a “Keyword” within your document text.

Example 3: - contains only 2 words. The words “Health” and “Vitality” have been removed simply because they are not likely words for people to search on, so are serving more to “water down” our more important “Keywords”. This example may actually be a little too extreme. For a real Web page title, the addition of one or two appropriate keywords could improve this - for example if your focus was on “Natural” products, “Natural Nutritional Supplements” would improve the title dramatically. To take this another step, if your products are herbal, then : “Natural Herbal Nutritional Supplements” may be the best choice.

When deciding on the right “Keywords” to use in your page TITLEs, remember Your Best Tool for assistance is the Search Engines !!!. Use the search engines to help you as described in the section:

Keyword meta tags - and Choosing Your Keywords.———————————————-

Keywords and phrases should be included in the TITLE, META TAGS, and contents of your web pages.

Back to Table of Contents

META TAGS - Guerilla Marketing using “keyword” and “description” meta tags.

Many people already know what META TAGS are and many use them, but most make rather “Ineffective Use” of these Extremely Powerful Tools.

META TAGS are one of the most important parts of your web site. Some search engines use Meta Tags to get more information about the contents of your web site.

META TAGS never actually show up as visable text on your site, they can only be read by “viewing a page’s source code”. The strategy of using META TAGS to FULL ADVANTAGE is only used by a small percentage of sites on the web, so you won’t be the only one using these strategies. Even so, it is Absolutely Essential to Your Success !.

  The <META> tag has three attributes, they are :

    NAME          ( Name indicates “Key” of the “Key / Value” pair.)
    HTTP-EQUIV    ( Creates new HTTP header field with this name.)
    CONTENT       ( use to set the “Value” of “Key / Value” pair.)

Meta tags provide additional information about your document, for example Keywords for Search Engines, special HTTP Headers to use for retrieving the document etc. In general, you would use the tag when there isn’t another HTML tag you could use to supply the information. Information is usually supplied as “Key / Value” pairs.

“NAME”

or “HTTP-EQUIV” attributes provide the “Key” or “Header Field” Name, and the CONTENT attribute supplies the “Value” for that Key.

  Examples:

————————————–
      attribute =  key     content = value
<meta HTTP-EQUIV=”refresh” content=”3;url=http://www.there.com/page1.html”>

Looking at the above example and information, you can see that the HTTP-EQUIV attribute creates a new HTTP response header, using the “refresh” directive for it’s key. So the HTTP Header is created with the name “refresh”, and it’s value is set by the “CONTENT” attribute to:

  "3;url=http://www.there.com/page1.html"

The result is a HTTP response header that says:

refresh: 3; url=http://www.there.com/page1.html

See the section “Pointer Pages (client pull), Keywords, & Hiding Your Code.” below for further information on how to take advantage of the Powerful HTTP-EQUIV attribute and the “refresh” directive.

  Examples :
--------------------------------------

Other information you may want to provide using meta tags, could be the email address of the documents author :

   attrib =  key    content = value

<meta NAME=”author” content=”your-email-address-here”>

A Web server will add this meta-information to the response header of the document as:

author: your-email-address-here

You could add a publication date using :

   attrib =  key      content = value
<meta NAME=”published” content=”Mon, 14 July 1997″>

A Web server will add this meta-information to the response header as :

published: Mon, 14 July 1997

You can add “Keywords” using :

   attrib =  key      content = value

<meta NAME=”keywords” content=”Search Engine Secrets”>

Again, this meta-information is added to the response header as :

keywords: Search Engine Secrets

All

META TAG codes are placed inside the <HEAD> section of your HTML code.

Here's an example:
------------------

<HEAD>
<TITLE> Search Engine Secrets </TITLE>
<meta name=”description” content=”Learn the Secrets of the Search Engine Pros !. Get Listed at the Top Every Time !.”>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”search engine secrets, search engine spamming, search engine listing, search engine tutorial, search engine design, web page design, web design secrets, web marketing, internet marketing, html secrets, html page design”>

</HEAD>

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“Description” meta tags.

Many people use unimaginative, bland descriptions for their pages. You must write a description that PULLS people to your site. The “description” is like an advertisement HEADLINE. If the HEADLINE doesn’t GRAB the reader and act like a MAGNET to the advertisement, it simply won’t get read. Treat the “description” in your meta tags EXACTLY as you would an advertisement HEADLINE. The same can also be said for the TITLE. You MUST use POWERFUL words and phrases in your “ad headline” to attract attention. Here are some simple examples of Powerful Words and Phrases.

POWERFUL, EASY, FREE, GUARANTEED, MONEY, PROVEN, SAVE, BEST, REVOLUTIONARY, SECRET, THE BEST, KEPT SECRET, UNBELIEVABLE, FANTASTIC, ONE TIME OPPORTUNITY, FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY, NEW, IMPROVED, STATE OF THE ART, SUPER, SAVE, CASH, DISCOVER, HOT, HOTTEST, MUST SEE TO BELIEVE, TOTALLY EFFECTIVE, EXPLOSIVE

You should try to use the Same Keywords in your “description” meta tags, your “keyword” meta tags, TITLE , and the opening of your first paragraph of text.

Some search engines use the “description” meta tag to provide a summary for your web page in their search listings, however there are many search engines which don’t make use of meta tags at all. Most of these will use only around the first 25 Words or 200 - 250 characters of the first paragraph from your page, so the opening of your first paragraph becomes the description.

 See "Keyword meta tags - and Choosing Your Keywords." (below)

Using this marketing strategy can get you more site traffic than you would believe possible. Remember to write your WEB site descriptions in your META TAGS like order pulling advertisements, and be ready for your WEB traffic to EXPLODE !. This technique alone can improve traffic by over 1,000% !!!

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Keyword meta tags - and Choosing Your Keywords.

The “keyword” META TAG is equally important, and is the most commonly used form of “META TAG search engine strategy”. Many people already know about keyword meta tags, and still only a select few actually use them effectively.

First, develop your own personalized set of keywords and phrases to guide people to your site. You will need several KEYWORDS, although you can have as many as you like. You must choose your keywords according to the Page Content, and the kind of traffic you are trying to attract.

Phrases are more likely to be successful than single words. Often, a mix of both phrases and single words works best. Try the following steps to “Find Your Top Competition” - and then get to work on getting listed above them !.

Your Best Tool - The Search Engines

Search the web for your competition. A good starting point could be Yahoo : http://www.yahoo.com/
(There is a Links list of many search engines at the end of this document)

Type in the URL, use your Bookmark, or use the links in this document to go to a search engine, such as “yahoo.com”:

   http://www.yahoo.com/

Using yahoo.com as an example, after determining the results from this site (as outlined following), you can launch the same searches from the “yahoo page” to other search engines like Webcrawler, Altavista, Infoseek and many more. When you have located a search engine, procede as follows.

Type a “keyword” or “phrase” into the search engine and check the results.

Note: When searching for your competition, avoid using plurals, adjectives, adverbs etc. in your search “keyword” or “phrase”. Remember our “TITLE” examples above ?. If you avoid using plurals etc. in your search for competition, you won’t miss those who neglect or don’t know this rule. If you do use plurals etc., you’ll miss all the sites which neglected to use them, so taking “nutritional supplements” as an example, you should search for “nutrition supplement” !. You must also take “Case Sensitivity” into consideration. Some of the search engines are case sensitive, at lease to some degree. You should always design your own pages with this in mind. Type in your search keywords in lower case only, and repeat the search capitalizing just the first letter of each word, then repeat again capitalizing everything. Compare the results of each search. Some search engines, (the case sensitive ones) may return vastly different results on each search. (Check AltaVista and Infoseek for good examples). When you find a case sensitive search engine where the same site keeps the top listing for upper and lower case searches, check their code carefully - they have done a good web page design job !.

Your Biggest Competition Can Work for You

Go to the #1 site listed by the search engine, and try looking at their source code. Your browser should provide this capability under the

View or File menu bar. ( For Netscape it's under View - Document Source. )
-       -                                        -                -

If you can view their source code, then you have STRUCK GOLD !. Save this code so you can use similar (hopefully even better) code in your pages to get the #1 Listing Yourself !. Study their code and ask yourself, “what is unique about this code that may account for it being listed at the top” ?. Look at the #2 listing and do the same - compare these and look for clues !. If you can’t view the source code don’t be too surprised, this means the author knows how to “Hide Source Code” - something I will tell you how to do a little further on.

     Meanwhile - continue as follows...

Note the TOTAL number of results the search engine returned. The smaller this number, the better. (Higher numbers mean more competition to beat.)

You may want to repeat the above search and note steps, using several different “Keywords” or “Phrases” which you would expect “Most People Looking for What You Provide” would use. Remember to repeat this on different search engines - you may find dramatic differences !.

Study all these results “Very Carefully” to help you decide on which Keywords and Phrases will have the best chance to put YOU at the TOP !. Now it’s time to choose your KEYWORDS !.

Choose at least the 3 most important Keywords. Use these in your Title, Description, meta tags, and in the opening of the 1st Paragraph of your pages text content. Remember, the beginning of the 1st paragraph of your Web page will often be what is displayed by a search engine after the title. (Unless the search engine uses the “description” meta tag for this).

Always remember that a “reasonably narrow” set of keywords and phrases which relate well to your product or service on a well designed page, can usually provide the best results without the risk of “spamming”, and getting banned !!.

Back to Table of Contents

Checking Your Tags - A Software Tool to Help !.

Before you go submitting pages to the search engines, Check Your Meta Tags to see that they are acceptable. This can save you a lot of time !. If you don’t check them and find they get rejected because of suspected “spamming”, it’s just more lost time !.

There is a Great Tool you can use for Free sitting on the net. This tool will inspect your page, analyze the Meta Tags, and give you a report. The tool I am referring to is called

Meta Medic at http://www.northernwebs.com/set/setsimjr.html

When you have your page up and ready for testing, go to “Meta Medic” and enter the URL of your page. From the instant report you get, you will see if there are any changes required in your meta tags. Keyword tags can be quite large but don’t always need to be, so if the Meta Medic Report tells you that your Keyword tag is only say 50% utilized and you can consider adding more keywords, Don’t Worry too much !. What you really need to keep in mind is “Who’s your Top Competition, and Why are they in the Top Listings”. You may even find that your top competition doesn’t use any meta tags, or that they only contain a few words or phrases !.

Whatever you do, Always Check Your Top Competition Using the Search Engines, Analyze Their “Entire Page” Then make yours better.

Although meta tags Can Play an Important Role, they are no good just by themselves - Quality Content and Layout must always be the primary goal. “Quality Meta Tags” are a powerful trimming if used correctly !.

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Keyword Packing. (A Technique Considered as Spamming)

Keyword packing is “numerously repeating your keywords” on a page. This strategy is known as “Spamming” , and personally I do not recommend it. Why ?. Because it can prevent your pages being listed at all on some of the top search engines like Infoseek, and can at worst result in your entire site being Permanently Banned !!!.

Before trying this type of strategy, you should try to get a good positioning by using a reasonably narrow set of keywords and phrases which relate well to your product or service. Using a narrower set of keywords and phrases with a well designed page can usually provide the best results without the risk of getting banned !!!.

It is possible to make this strategy work by packing many different keywords (don’t repeat the same words) at the bottom of the page, provided you do NOT try to hide them by coloring the text and background the same. This strategy is getting harder to use successfully without “spamming” , because repeating the same set of keywords and phrases over and over is is considered exactly that. To be successful, you need to find as many keywords and phrases you possibly can which actually relate to you product, service, or subject matter. Using unrelated keywords and phrases is also considered spamming.

Many people seem to practice this technique so I will cover it briefly here, but BE WARNED - *** Once You Are Banned, Your Stuffed. ***. Getting banned can be expensive !!!. The bottom line ?. Lost Business, Time, Money, and the stress and expense of moving your site and getting re-established.

A common practice is to pack keywords towards the bottom of the page, and “comouflage” them by making the text and background the same color. The practice of hiding text by making it the same color as the background is definitely considered as “spamming”, and may result in your pages being permanently banned by some of the top search engines such as Infoseek. The following information on Color Control contains all you need to know in order to hide text.

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Color Control - changing text and background colors

  How do you make the text and background colors the same ?.
  There are two methods available, these are :

     1) the "TEXT"  attribute of the html <BODY> tag.
     2) the "COLOR" attribute of the html <FONT> tag.

The one you choose will depend on individual requirements, but the most common choice is #2, the “COLOR” attribute of the html tag. This is because hiding normal text with choice #1 effects the entire page, and there is usually some “normal text” which the author wants visible. Using the html tag only effects the text within the begin and end tags.

1) HTML <BODY> Tag color attributes

The <BODY> tag has the following attributes for defining colors in your documents, where “rrggbb” is replaced by the Hexadecimal (base 16) RGB value to make the color (RGB = Red Green Blue). Each color is represented by 2 Hexadecimal digits, the higher the value, the brighter the color. So black is defined as “000000″ and white is “#FFFFFF”. Adjusting the individual values for rr (red), gg (green), or bb (blue), you can create any color you like.

     BGCOLOR="#rrggbb"  Specifies the color for the background.
     TEXT="#rrggbb"     Specifies the color for normal text.
     LINK="#rrggbb"     Specifies the color for unvisited links.
     ALINK="#rrggbb"    Specifies the color for active links.
     VLINK="#rrggbb"    Specifies the color for visited links.

To set the Text and Background colors both to white, you would use the following BGCOLOR and TEXT attributes in the tag as follows :

        <BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#FFFFFF">

Since this defines text and background for the entire document, there won’t be any visable “Normal Text” on the page at all. This is OK if you only require Graphics and Links on the page, otherwise you need to use the Color attribute of the  tag for hiding text.

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2) HTML Tag color attributes

The “COLOR” attribute of the html  tag can be used to set text color anywhere on the page, but is not supported by all browsers. Netscape 2.0 up and Internet Explorer support the COLOR attribute, but as yet this is not officially part of the HTML 3.0 specification.

As you would expect, the same “#rrggbb” system is used to define the colors as described above for the <BODY> Tag. Here is how it works.

Simply surround the text you want colored within begin and end tags with your defined color like this.

Here is some Grass Green Text and this text is Normal, but look at this Really Red Text

If supported by your browser, this is what the above code produces …

Here is some

Grass Green Text and this text is Normal, but look at this Really Red Text

Common Colors - List of Hex RGB Values

Here is a list of Hexadecimal values used to create some common colors:

      Color            Value
      -----------------------
      White            FFFFFF
      Black            000000
      Red              FF0000
      Green            00FF00
      Blue             0000FF
      Yellow           00FFFF
      Purple           FF00FF
      Brown            996633
      Cream            FFFBF0
      Cyan             00FFFF
      Light Grey       C0C0C0
      Medium Grey      A0A0A4
      Dark Grey        808080
      Dark Red         800000
      Dark Green       008000
      Dark Blue        000080
      Dark Yellow      808000
      Dark Purple      800080
      Grass Green      C0DCC0
      Sky Blue         A6CAF0

Some other reports on this subject will recommend this practice of packing and hiding keywords in your text, and other “spamming” techniques which can also see your pages pemanently banned !!!.

Q.: So what is the best strategy to get a top listing you ask ?.
A.: Good general page design.
You must plan your entire page construction carefully from the TITLE, DESCRIPTION and KEYWORD Meta Tags, and the first 200 - 250 characters of your opening paragraph. All these elements together are the keys to achieving a top position listing in the search engines !.

  For detailed information on Search Engine "Spamming", go to 


http://www.infoseek.com/Help?pg=spam.html

See “Pointer Pages (Client Pull), Keywords, & Hiding Your Code” below for more info.

Back to Table of Contents

Page Content

1st Paragraph and putting it all together

1st Paragraph as a Description

The first paragraph of a Web Page is used as the “description” or summary by many search engines which do not make use of Meta Tags. Your first paragraph is of “Paramount Importance” !.

As mentioned earlier, not all search engines make use of meta tags. Most search engines which don’t make use of the tags will use only around the first 25 Words or 200 characters of text from your page for the summary. So the opening of your first paragraph becomes the description or summary as displayed by the search engine listing for your page.

Your first paragraph must be clear, use your keywords, and remember this is like an advertisement for your page. Your <TITLE> is the first thing that will be read, so is your first opportunity to build recognition for your Web site, Product, or Service - this is your HEADLINE. This headline must give a good idea of what will be found on your page. If it does not, most people won’t even bother to read the description (or summary). Now the description (or summary) should be constructed in such a way as to &quotflow on” from your title, and draw the viewer into clicking your link.

1st Paragraph and Meta Tag Descriptions - Examples

Here is an example of well constructed page, with title, META TAGS for “description and keywords”, and informative opening to the first paragraph of text (which will be used as description/summary by many engines). Note in the “keyword META Tag, how keywords are in lower case first, and then repeated with the first letter capitalized. Not many people use capitals to any great extent, but sometimes capitalize the first letter of each word without even thinking about it. This is because they are often searching for words they expect to see in a TITLE, and what they see in the titles often has the first letter of each word capitalized !. By including these words with the first letter capitalized, you stand a better chance of listing higher when someone doing a search makes this mistake. (Yes it is a mistake to capitalize except for names, but people still do it.)


          <HEAD> 

          <TITLE>#1 Computer tape hardware media and software solutions</TITLE>

</HEAD>

<BODY>
Our full range of computer tape hardware, media, backup and data conversion software solutions can be tailored to meet the most demanding requirements. All products carry full manufacturers guarantees, and free phone / fax support for all software products. Our innovative solutions provide you with the best price / performance, and reliability available on the market.

Rest of page including other keywords etc etc…

</BODY>

Search engines which support META TAGS would display something like this…

#1 Computer tape hardware media and software solutions
——————————————————

Top brands, best prices and support for all mag tape hardware and software requirements. Including QIC, DAT, 8mm, DLT, 9 track, video, backup and data / media conversion software, for DOS/WIN, NT, and Unix.
http://www.number-1.com/solution-1.html

And those without support for META TAGS would likely display this…

#1 Computer tape hardware media and software solutions 

          ——————————————————

Our full range of computer tape hardware, media, backup and data conversion software solutions can be tailored to meet the most demanding requirements. All products carry full manufacturers guarantees, and free phone / fax support for all software products. Our innovative solutions provide you with…
http://www.number-1.com/solution-1.html

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Fatal Mistakes - Examples

Many web page designers make fatal mistakes in both the areas of “TITLE” and “description” (or summary) design, sometimes neglecting to give the page a title at all, and using Author/Copyright/Version information as the first text on the page. This can lead to a search engine listing which looks something like this …


          No Title. 

          ———

By Willyou Readit and Noyou Wont. DeadWebPage Designs. 1-800-WILL-YOU-CALL http://www.deadwebdesign.com. (C) Copyright 1997 by Willyou Readit All Rights Reserved. Version 1.2.3.4 This page is dedicated to …
http://www.deadwebdesign.com/badpage.html

Would you follow a link to this page ?. I seriously doubt it !!!.

The reader is given no idea about this page at all, and believe it or not there are pages like this on the web. I doubt they get much traffic, if any !. This is only one example of “the worst kind” for the opening text on a page. Others include things like putting a “menu of links” at the top of the page, so the reader may see something like this …

No Title. 

          ———

Again, the reader has no information and won’t visit the page !.

Success depends on Careful thought and Planning of each and every web page you design, starting with the TITLE and KEYWORDS, then flowing descriptions and opening paragraphs. They must be clear, informative, and well laid out to make good use of the search engines !!!.

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The Order of things

Ties for a Listing Position

When there is a tie between 2 sites for the same listing position in a search engine index, the way in which a winner is decided depends entirely on how that particular engine ranks the listings. Although others may tell you this is done “Alphabetically” they will usually be WRONG !!!. The Major Search Engines at least, don’t list like that any more - they use Relevance Rankings !!!. If you haven’t realized this yet, you have skipped some of the Most Important Information in this manual. You should go back and read Everything you skipped, and pay particular attention to Keyword Targeting and Ranking.

Many Classified Advertisement and Directory Sites are where the following information is going to be of Great Importance to your promotion efforts, though some of this information can apply equally to the search engines - so don’t skip through here just because you’re concentrating on the search engines !. You may sometimes find it difficult to distinguish clearly between what is a Search Engine, and what is a Directory. This is to be expected, since many sites that are in Actual Fact Directories, refer to themselves as Search Engines !. And on top of that, there can even be some “Overlap” of these functions on some sites. It’s no wonder the distinction between them can be so difficult and unclear. To help you out with this, the easiest way to make a distinction between a Directory and a Search Engine, is to say “If Results are Returned in Date, Alphabetic, Alphanumeric, or Lexical Order - it’s a Directory”. Such ordered lists are Directories, just like your telephone Directory. Even though a “Search Capability” may be provided, the results are in a “Directory Order”.

“If search results are provided by Relevance Ranking, it’s a Search Engine”.

The order of the results have been determined based on the Content of of the Data only, this is what a True Search Engine is.

Yahoo was always classed as a Directory,

and is mentioned here. However they changed the way results are returned and could now be considered by some as a search engine because of this. Others will call them a directory simply based on the fact that all submissions are handled by humans. I don’t see that as a big deal, and consider this site as one of those which has a certain amount of “Overlap”.

Alphabetic - Alphanumeric - Lexigraphic ?

You will find the following information is most useful when listing in Directories and Classified Advertising sites. If you are not sure about the distinction between a Search Engine and a Directory, read the previous section before proceeding !.

There is No Magic Formula

, however Directories and Classified Advertising sites may list search results in “Alphanumeric” order, (or) ascending ASCII order. The ascending ASCII code order may also be known to some as “Lexical or Lexigraphic” order !. It’s should be no surprise then that I have included a reference in this section to “LEXICONN”, Read on and see the valuable example this will provide for you !. Yahoo used to list results alphanumerically, (they say Alphabetic though) and provides this as an option for the user, but this is not the default setting. Most search engines give a relevancy ranking, and where there is a tie here, then alphanumeric (or ascending ASCII) order may (or may not) be the decider.

The Truth Uncovered ! - with the Exclamation

Many people think “alphabetic” order is the key used, and completely forget about “Symbols, Punctuation”, the digits 0-9 and “alphanumeric” (or ascending ASCII) order. So they start thinking the letter “A” is first. Others may even try to tell you that “the Numbers Come First”, starting with “0″. Well, the TRUTH IS that in MOST Cases:

“the SYMBOLS COME FIRST”. That’s right, the SYMBOLS - starting with the Exclamation Mark !.

You have a Modem - don’t you ?.

Then look up the Table of ASCII Codes in your Modem Manual !. Now see the ascending order of these ASCII Codes. The lowest values come first, so the Exclamation Mark is the first printable character, followed by the Hash # (or) Pound sign - the first printable characters in ascending ASCII order are these …


          !#$%&’()*+,-./

Then the digits 0 through 9

:;<=>?@

Next come the letters, Capitals first !. Though some Directories and Search Engine sites are not “case sensitive”, MANY ARE !. Capitals and Lower-case letters are NOT considered equal where a site is “Case Sensitive”. Always be aware of this, as this one trips many people up. As a classic example, when reading the “tips and hints” for searching on one of the engines, it said “Only Capitalize the first letter of Proper Names”. Why would they say that if their engine wasn’t case sensitive ?. They wouldn’t !. This is said simply to help you return good results from their engine, since it is normal to only capitalize proper names, the first word of a sentence, and maybee when you want to stress a word or words !. Be very aware of case sensitivity, and design all your web pages and advertisements with this in mind. Mix case, so your keywords are present starting with both lower and upper case letters !.

So, now you know that there is no Magic Formula, and that many people don’t realize that the Symbols usually come first (some do), check the web and see for yourself how “a select few” use this technique, particularly in the Business Directory listing type places. You can easily do the same !. Just go to somewhere like

LEXICONN Search at http://www.lexiconn.com/dir , and do a search for “Business Opportunities” in the category Business Opportunities !. I bet the first listings begin with the !exclamation mark, followed by entries that start with “#”. Then come the numbers, then letters !. Am I right ?. You bet I am !!!.

If for example you provided a “Mortgage Broker Service”, and you found the top listing in a Directory or Advertising Site was currently “AAA Mortgage Brokers” , you could try a tactic such as using the “#” symbol (and or) exclamation mark! at the beginning of your Advertisement or Page Title - like

"#1 Mortgages Brokers Services"

Always remember to look at the top few listings, and analyze why these have achieved their relative listing positions. When dealing with Search Engine Listings, always check the “Source Code” of the top listings for any clues. You could be wasting time playing with the title !. Check their source code first, analyzing all areas before playing with your title.

Remember you can use something other than your “Company Name”. Often the best titles contain keywords relating to the subject matter or products on that page. Always remember to distinguish clearly what you are dealing with - are you listing in a Search Engine, or a Directory ?. Your strategy may need to be vastly different when listing in a directory !. DO BE Careful about using or implying (intentionally or not) Someone Elses Company Name or Trademark.

—————————————-

It is beyond the scope of this report to cover this subject, but suffice to say that unless you are completely familiar with this area of LAW, you should ALWAYS get “Proper Legal Advice” wherever appropriate.

You Don’t Want a Law Suit !!!.
——————————

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Pointer Pages (Client Pull), Keywords, and Hiding Your Code

You must be careful about how you use this technique. If not done carefully and correctly, some search engines consider this practice as “spamming”. They may ban pages from their directories for doing so. Infoseek says using this technique to “pull” pages “faster than the human eye can see” is considered spamming, and may cause you to be penalized. They (Infoseek) neglect to define what they consider as “faster than the human eye can see”, but by being sensible, this technique can still be used to great effect !.
Q.: What is Client Pull ?
A.: “Client Pull”
is a technique using the “refresh” directive of the Meta-Tag HTTP-EQUIV attribute, which causes the “Client Browser” to “Pull in” another specified URL.
Q.: What are Pointer Pages ?
A.: Pointer Pages
are WEB pages which are set up to “Point” to another URL on the WEB, and cause the Client Browser to Pull in the new URL automatically by using “client pull” .

Pointer Pages

(client pull) can be used to get your pages listed under numerous keywords, and to “Hide Your Source Code” from prying eyes !. You can pack these “Pointer Pages” with your keywords, and let them bring you numerous listings under your Keywords, and a flood of traffic to your site. Read on to find out how this works !.

“refresh” directive of the “HTTP-EQUIV” Meta Tag attribute

The key to this strategy is the “refresh” directive of the META TAG attribute:

HTTP-EQUIV

which can be used to implement the technique known as “Client Pull” . This technique can be used to instantly take the client browser to the page you want. We refer to Web Pages using this technique as “Pointer Pages”. Other special effects can be created (animation for example) using “client pull”, however this will not be discussed here. You should always include a link to the targeted page in the body of pointer pages, so that people using browsers which don’t support this operation can get to your page.

Here’s an example:

——————

Meanings in the above tag are :

attribute =   key    content = value
http-equiv="refresh" content="3;url=http://your.server.addr/your-page.html"

Meaning for the “content value” is: content=”DELAY_IN_SECONDS; Web_Resource”.

Web_Resource MUST specify the “FULL URL” to the target page for loading. Relative page addressing cannot be used.

So, the above HTTP-EQUIV meta tag says “Refresh this browser in 3 seconds, by loading the URL “http://your.server.addr/your-page.html”

Using a very low value for the “DELAY_IN_SECONDS” is now a contentious issue, and can be considered “spamming” as outilned above. Previously you could use a value of “0″ without any worry, but these days it is safer to choose a value of around 5 seconds or so. You can still be fairly safe, and have a good chance of hiding your source code !.

The secret that can Hide Your Source Code

Pointer Pages

are the secret that can hide your source code from prying eyes, because (for many browsers) the clients browser will almost “Instantly” (after the specified delay) load the page targeted by the “http-equiv” meta tags URL reference. This is the perfect opportunity to pack your page with a large number of keywords, without them being seen by others. Even if the surfer uses their “Back Button” to go back to your pointer page, after the specified delay they will be sent “Forward” to the targeted page again. Imagine with a delay of 5 seconds, this is all the time they have to view or try to save the Pointer Page !.

Back to Table of Contents

Create Well Designed Leader Pages

Better still, use the “Pointer Pages” strategy to create “Well Designed Leader Pages” with the express purpose of “pulling” your main, or other targeted page. Creating a well designed leader page can be as simple as taking the page you want to target, then make minimal but recognisable changes to it. Then add the HTTP-EQUIV meta tag and refresh directive to “pull” the targeted page, and save this as a different page and URL.

Don’t just copy the page and save as a different URL

as some will teach you to do. This is considered “spamming”, and can get your pages penalized or banned. Pointer Pages are a valuable tool if used correctly. Read on through the sections below “Multiple Listings with Pointer Pages”, and “Pointer Pages as a Positioning Tool”. Make sure you understand and realize the value of this tool and its proper application !.

Not All Browsers perform “Client Pull”

Note that above, I say (for many browsers) - this is because it is the WEB browser, NOT the server which takes the action of the “refresh” directive in the META TAG to load your targeted page. The “refresh” directive is new in the HTML 3.0 specification. Many people are using Netscape, which DOES obey the http-equiv META TAGs “refresh” directive. However, people using text only browsers, or as in my case, I mostly use a Unix platform and NCSA Mosaic (Source Code Compiled by myself) which lets me spy at these pages !. I guess that’s one advantage of being a programmer, having these resources available has been very valuable at times. (and can also drive you nuts !.).

Pointer Pages can be a Very Powerful Weapon for Direct WEB Marketing !.
=============          ====================

Multiple Listings with Pointer Pages

Some reports will tell you - “To get more than one page with the same search engine, all you have to do is copy the HTML code of your Pointer Page and save it as a different page with a different URL.”

DON’T - this practice is now considered “spamming”, but it can be beaten !.

The key to gaining multiple listings under multiple keywords is just as I outlined above in the section on “Creating Well Designed Leader Pages”. What you do is make minor changes (not just a word or two), for example change some of your keywords, and make a change to your first paragraph, then save it as a different page and URL with the HTTP-EQUIV attribute set to “pull” your targeted page. (Don’t forget to include a link to your targeted page in the body of the pointer page)

Now you understand the basic use of the Pointer Page strategies, but that’s not all they are useful for. Pointer Pages are also a useful tool to help you “Tune your Search Engine Positioning”, and can also help you “Steal Traffic from your Competition” !.

Read on to find out how !.

Pointer Pages as a Positioning Tool

Use your pointer pages as a tool to help “tune” your positioning . Remember you can create as many pointer pages as you like. Don’t create too many though, otherwise you could lose track of what you’re doing with them. Imagine “getting lost in a sea of pointer pages” !. Also, you will want to keep these pages permanently since people may have them bookmarked and use them to return to your site. You can remove pages from search engines listings if you really want to, but you shouldn’t want to !. The more listings you have the better !.

So try different things in your pointer pages - different keyword lists and ordering, rewrite your first paragraph - even rewrite the entire page !. These are the pages you can and should experiment with, NOT your main pages !.

Note which of your Pointer Pages get the higher positionings on various search engines. When your pointer pages achieve higher search engine listings (above your targeted pages), then you can consider changing your targeted page based on the contents of the higher ranking pointer page and re-submitting to the search engines.

Stealing Traffic from Your Competition

This pointer page strategy can be used to drive your competitions traffic directly to YOUR web site. Let’s say you sell GVC modems. You want to get some traffic from your competition (say Microcom), you use Microcom as one of your main keywords in your “Pointer Pages” In fact, you can set up pointer pages Just for This Purpose !. Now if you do it correctly, everytime someone searches for a Microcom modem, your site will list first. This will drive them absolutely crazy. You won’t get all of their traffic but you should get a good share of it.

  Legal Issues !.
  —————

Be careful when using the names of other Companies, Trademarks, or products you do not sell or represent !. I repeat, this subject is beyond the scope of this report, but suffice to say that unless you are completely familiar with this area of LAW, you should ALWAYS get “Proper Legal Advice” wherever appropriate.

You Don't Want a Law Suit !!!.
------------------------------

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“Alt” attribute of the html <IMG> tag

Using to display Text in place of an Image

The “alt” attribute of the <IMG> tag can be used to display text in place of an image. This is particularly useful to people using “Text Only” browsers, or users who have turned off the automatic image-loading feature of their browser. Too many web sites ignore users with “Text Only”, and those who leave image-loading turned off due to slow connection speeds. These users either “Can’t View or Don’t Want Graphics” . Unfortunately, so many of these sites do not provide for the Text Only browser, and hence they miss a lot of hits and potential clients.

See the topic

“Always Provide Textual Links and Descriptions”, in the section on “Site Clarity - Text, Graphics, and Frames” near the beginning of this document for complete information on this subject. In that section, take particular note in the examples that use of a “Plain Text” Link (in example 2), is preferred to the use of the “alt” attribute of example 1.

Some other reports on this subject recommend you use your “Keywords” in the “alt image” tag, along with any pictures or graphics you have on your page.

*** This technique is NOT RECOMMENDED *** because it is considered spamming, usually looks stupid, and may actually send people away !. ***

The following example shows you what others may recommend you do.

DON’T - unless you’re happy with a stupid looking page, and the risk of your page being dropped (and / or) banned from search engines.

Here’s an example of what NOT TO DO :

————————————-

Search engines may now penalize for using any strategy which numerously repeats words or phrases.

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Multiple Listings by changing your Title.

Although it is possible to get multiple listings in the same search engines by changing your title every few weeks, you should only change the title when you have evidence that doing so will improve your listing position. There is no point changing a page title in the hope of getting another listing, if the new listing you get could have a worse listing position !. Doing so is nothing less than commercial suicide !.

If your page already has top search engine positioning, Never Change the Title !. (or meta-tags)

If you have not achieved a top end listing, the key here is to use “Pointer Pages” as a positioning tool. Read the entire section dealing with

Pointer Pages, and the section dealing with Title and Keywords. Then get to work using these strategies with pointer pages to get multiple listing entries, and higher listing positions. Your normal course for gaining a better listing position should be to change and re-submit your pionter pages.

The time to change your title (and / or other contents) and re-submit a page is when a pointer page gains a higher listing than the page it targets. When this occurs, you may consider making changes to the title, keywords, meta-tags etc.

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Submitting Your Pages to Search Engines and Directories.

Priorities.

Before submitting your pages,

Check the Meta Tags with a software tool. This is free and easy to do On-line, and can end up saving you a lot of time - and will also help you get better at writing good tags !.

You should always submit your pages to all the “Robots” first, because you need to get in before they do their next search of the WEB. Most robots search and index on the WEB on a defined schedule, maybee once a week, some only once a month, or even less. Often, you won’t be able to find out what their schedules are, so submit to these ASAP to avoid missing out !!!.

It often pays to take things slowly to begin with. I recommend submitting to Infoseek first. Your pages will list almost INSTANTLY !. You can check your position, check your competition, then spend a day or two working on modifications to list your pages higher. Then re-submit to Infoseek.

Take Your Time and Get it Right !. Since it takes so long to get listed in some of the other engines and directories, spend a few weeks if you have to getting things right, and remember, what gets you a top listing in one search engine won’t necessarily work in some others !.

Don’t submit the SAME page more than Once in a 24 Hour Period to Infoseek, You could end up Getting Kicked Off !!!.

Some search engines (Infoseek for one) will list your page(s) within minutes, provided you use their

“Submission URL” (not e-mail), and your page(s) are acceptable - e.g. if their automatic submission process doesn’t detect possible “spamming” on your page. (Always Submit by URL if possible). Few search engines will list your pages immediately like this. Another place you can get a quick listing is “What’s New Too”. This site provides a “Description of Categories” which you should check before you prepare your Information for Submission, and promises to list your page/site within 36 hours.

If you want some visitors quickly, advertise in the most relevant newsgroups as soon as you have finished doing the “Quick List Sites” mentioned above. You don’t have to spend much time submitting adverts to the newsgroups, but do it every day, and in the commercial groups, place your ad two or three times every session, each with a different headline. This is a good way to fill in time while you get your listing position on Infoseek up, as you can expect it to take you at least a few days, or longer.

Even when you have submitted your URL, some robots may not visit your site during their next WEB search.

Next you should submit to the Directories, then the Free Links Pages, and Guides.
————

Once you have your web page(s) designed and tested, you need to promote them - let the world know about them !!!. For the Search Engines to list your pages, you must submit information about them to each engine. This can be time consuming, but done correctly is well worth the rewards.

Submit your pages yourself

It is important that you carry out most of your page submissions yourself rather than using any of the “Do it in One Hit” services available on the net. You can use one of these “Do it in One Hit” services to supplement your own submissions, but try to avoid making multiple submissions to the same search engines or directories !. The handling of multiple submissions slows the listing process down for everyone. This is one of the reasons it may already seem to take so long to get your pages listed in some engines !!!.

The first reason you should carry out your own submissions is because each search engine requests different kinds or amounts of information. Having the right information for each situation ensures you of obtaining the best results, in the quickest possible time WITHOUT ERRORS !!!. If you entrust this task to someone else, so be it. But remember that the submission process can make all the difference to the success of your listing, and therefore the success of your pages. If you only have a meager home page which you knocked up in a couple of hours, or you don’t really care how successful your pages are, then by all means use a “Submit in One Hit” type of service. After all, if you only spent a couple of hours putting up a page or two without any commercial content, why would you want to spend endless hours at the computer doing all the submission work yourself when you could have someone else do it for free (or just a few bucks !.)

Another reason you may want to do your own submissions is to start things off slowly. If you are offering some commercial service or product, you need to be able to handle the response you get. If you aren’t geared up to handle the volume of orders and inquiries which could come flowing in, things can get very nightmarish !. Imagine if you could cope with 300 - 400 orders per week for your product, and suddenly you had 10 times that - it’s possible, so start carefully !. By starting off slowly, it allows you to “Test the Water”. You may want to take this approach if you are very new to this, but if you are an Aggressive Marketer ready to handle whatever business you can generate, Submit Everywhere as Hard and as Fast as you can !.

If your Web Site/Page success is important, Do the Submissions Yourself !. Then you can’t blame anyone else for it’s failure or SUCCESS, and you remain fully aware and in control of the process and progress !.

You must prepare your submission information to cater for each submission situation with ease. By being well prepared you will save time, and be sure to obtain the best results.

Back to Table of Contents

Submit in One Hit Services.

For those of you who want to use a One Hit submission service to supplement your own submissions, or don’t have the time to do your own, I recommend you check some of the following services to see what they have to offer. For example, “Entity” may work well in saving time to get posted to many directories, Yellow Pages, and Free Links sites, after you have made your own submissions to the main search engines. All the sites listed here offer free services, and some also offer fee based services. There are many more similar services available (you can find on yahoo) if you want to check them out.

    @Submit !                http://www.uswebsites.com/forms/atsubmit.html
    A1's Directory                    http://www.vir.com/~wyatt/index.html
    Entity ( Global Site Submission ) http://www.henge.com/superpage/entity/
    Internet Secretary       http://www.mnsinc.com/elegance/ss/sear/alpha/a.htm
    Promote It!              http://www.cam.org/~psarena/promote-it.html
    Register It!             http://www.register-it.com/index.html
    Submit It!               http://www.submit-it.com/
    Submit URL               http://gargamel.ptw.com/~hayden/submit.html
    The Postmaster           http://www.netcreations.com/postmaster/
    Virtual Promote          http://www.smartdesk.com/promote.html
    Web AdVentures           http://www.webadventures.com/500sitex.htm
    WebPost                  http://www.webpost96.com/wp.htm

Information for Submission.

The best way to prepare your information for submission to the search engines and directories is to organize it into a text page using a simple editor like Windows Notepad or Write. Then you can keep this text page open and “copy and paste” the information into the submission page in your browser. This is the quickest and most efficient way to perform this task.

You will need to prepare at least 2 descriptions, or even better still, 4 or more. You need at least one short description of 25 words or less, but it pays to also have a “Very Short” description of 10 words or less for some places. You will also need one or two long descriptions. Some engines only accept a short description, others accept both long and short descriptions. I say one or two long descriptions, because some search engines accept around 100 words for a long description and others will accept virtually any size. So, if a long description in excess of 100 words is appropriate for your purpose, you may well want to prepare 2 long descriptions.

You need to arrange a list of “Keywords”. These should be listed in order of importance, so if there is a limit which prevents you from submitting all your keywords the most important ones will take precidence.

Some search engines will also want you to put your web site or page(s) into one or more “Classification Categories”. These should also be listed in order of importance like the “Keyword” list. It may be a good idea to visit a few sites and look at their “Classification Categories” while putting this list together. For example, check out the “What’s New Too” Description of Categories and use this to help you start sorting out a list.

See the following example on how to set out your submission information.

Example Submission Info.

Title:

#1 Computer Tape Hardware Media and Software Solutions

URL:

http://www.number-1.com/solution-1.html

Very Short Description (10 Words Max):

Computer Tape Hardware, Media, Backup and Data Conversion Software Solutions.

Short Description:

Our full range of Computer Tape Hardware, Media, Backup and Data Conversion software solutions can be tailored to meet the most demanding requirements. All products carry full manufacturers guarantees, and free phone / fax support for all software products.

Long Description:

Our full range of Computer Tape Hardware, Media, Backup and Data Conversion software solutions can be tailored to meet the most demanding requirements. All products carry full manufacturers guarantees, and free phone / fax support for all software products. Our innovative solutions provide you with the best price / performance, and reliability available on the market. We provide top brands at the best prices, and full support for all your Magnetic Tape Hardware and Software requirements. Our products include QIC, DAT, 8mm, DLT, 9 Track, Video, Backup and Data / Media Conversion Software, for DOS/WIN, NT, and most Unix platforms.

Keywords:

Magnetic Tape SCSI Computer Hardware Software QIC DAT DLT 8mm Video 9-Track, Computer Backup, Data Conversion, Magnetic Helical Scan, Tape Hardware, Backup Software, 8mm Video 9-Track 1600 3200 6250 Digital

Computers
Computer Hardware

Computer Software
Computer Backup
Computer Supplies
Computer Tape

—————————

Comments for Above Example.

You must proof read and edit your data very carefully !!!.
You DO NOT want to submit a page with misspelled keywords, or an incorrect URL to 30 or so search engines, that would be a disaster !.

In the above example, for short descriptions requiring 25 words or less, we could use just the first sentence of our “Short Description”. Note that the information is laid out in a form that you could use to submit by e-mail to those search engines which require this.

To summarise, you will need to organize the following into a text page so you can easily “copy and paste” the required information into the submission forms as necessary.

   1)   TITLE                        ( remember the importance of your title )
   2)   Full URL                     ( complete address for your page )
   3)   Short and Long Descriptions. ( cater for all possibile sizes  )
   4)   Keywords                     ( arrange in order of importance )
   5)   Categories                   ( arrange in order of importance )

                        ---------------------------

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Web Robots.

Q.: What is a Web Robot ?.
A.: Robots (also known as Spiders, Wanderers, and Crawlers) are “search engine programs” which visit Web sites and “may” recursively retrieve linked Web Pages.

Before submitting your pages to a “Robot”, you must ensure your Web space is not protected from Web Robots by a “robots.txt” file.

Q.: What is a “robots.txt” file.
A.: A “robots.txt” file is a file located at the “root” of a web servers document space, which may protect the entire site or selective portions of the document space from intrusion by web robots. Protection from web robots may be desirable, or even necessary for some areas of a web servers document space. For example, Web Robots have been known to cause problems with CGI scripts, so they may need protecting.

Check with your ISP or Web Space provider first. If they maintain a “robots.txt” file, make sure any required alterations are made so your pages can be accessed by web robots. If you are using your providers CGI scripts or have your own cgi-bin directory, these may need to be protected. If you are not sure, discuss this with your provider and they will advise you and make the necessary entries in the robots.txt file for you. (Only the servers root administrator can alter a robots.txt file.)

Submission Information for Robots.

In many cases, the only information a “Robot” will require is the “Full URL” (complete address) for your page(s). For example:

http://www.mysite.com/~myusername/mypage.html

This will depend on the particular robot, remember they all operate differently. Some robots require that you make a submission for each and every page you want listed. Others only want your “Top Home Page URL”, and will search your site to find pages “underneath” (linked to) the page you submit. Some may even provide controls so that you can set “how deep” (how many directory or link levels down) it will search to find pages on your site.

Always have “complete information” ready for submission as described in the above section

“Information for Submission”. If you prepare your information properly, you will be ready and able to cope with all the varied submission requirements !.

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Directories and Guides.

Directories

Many directories are manually updated, with quite limited human resources. Many of these will look at your site and rate it before deciding whether it merits inclusion in their directory. This is a time consuming process for them, so a popular directory may take several weeks, or even months before they get around to looking at your site. Even then, if they aren’t impressed with what they see you may not get listed. There we have another good reason for “Good Overall Site/Page Design” !!!.

Guides.

Guides are more difficult to get listed in than directories. They are generally very discriminatory, so if your site doesn’t stand out as “Absolutely Excellent” it just won’t get listed. The popular guides have long waiting lists just like the directories. They also have to come up with ratings and write reviews, so the process of getting listed in a guide usually takes even longer than it does in a directory.

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Other Places and Techniques to Promote Your Site.

There are literally thousands of places besides the search engines on the net, where you can promote your site or web page(s). These include not only the Directories and Guides, but Newsgroups, Free Links Pages, and Free Classified Ad Pages. Although published statistics say 99% of site hits are generated by the major search engines, I believe this figure to be highly inflated !.

The first thing you need to do is create a good “signature file” which you use in all your E-mail and Newsgroup postings. In the signature file, you literally “advertise your site or home page” !.

Large amounts of traffic and sales can be generated by using a good signature file which directs people to your site.

Using Signature Files.

The Signature File

A signature file is a file which contains such things as your Company or Trading Name, Voice and Fax contact details, email addresses, real name, brief information on what you or your company offers, and your web site address !!!. This “electronic signature” is your advertisement which should be carried on all your electronic correspondence - email and newsgroup postings.

This “electronic signature” is tacked onto the bottom of your e-mail and newsgroup postings automatically by the software you use to access these services. This is a very powerful form of advertising if done correctly. Exactly how you create and use a signature file will depend on the software package you use for e-mail and newsgroup access and posting, but this is usually simple to work out (check the help file or documentation). If you use netscape for your e-mail and newsgroup access, check the configuration menus under Options - Mail and News Preferences. There you will find everything you need to configure.

In some cases you will need to create your signature file with a plain text editor, then configure your software to use this file. Some software packages such as Pegasus Mail allow you to create multiple signature files from within the package itself.

Basic Rules for Signature Files

Basics rules you should remember when creating your signature file are:

1.: Keep it short !. Try to keep to 5 lines maximum, and no more than 70 characters width in a line. Because e-mail and newsgroup postings add an indent character when including text from a previous message, if you go over 70 characters wide it won’t be long before the lines start “wrapping around” and look stupid !!!. The 70 character width rule should also apply to all text in your email and newsgroup postings. Some people get very annoyed by excessively long signatures, or lines exceeding 70 characters which can be either difficult or impossible to read. You will find this especially true in the newsgroups.
2.: Create your signature file using a “Fixed Width Font” , so you can see what it really looks like to people with “Text Only” access. Remember the general standard for text terminals is 24 or 25 lines by 80 characters wide. The easiest way to do this on a P.C. is under a DOS session using the MS-DOS “edit.exe” program. If your signature looks O.K. under MS-DOS edit, but things don’t “line up” under your windows based email or newsgroup program, it will be because your windows program is not using a “Fixed Width Font”. Change your windows program to use a Fixed Width Font - don’t try altering your signature to look correct using a proportional font in windows or it may look stupid to the rest of the world !.; The Best Signatures look good using either a Fixed or Proportional font. Sometimes this can be hard to do, but TRY - it’s well worth the extra effort !.
3.: This is your advertisement !!!. Make it effective. Remember all the rules for creating “Powerful Headlines” and incorporate these into your signature. To get some ideas, have a look through the newsgroups at other peoples signatures - especially the commercially orientated ones. See what grabs you - and what doesn’t.
4.: Make it visually appealing - again, check what others are doing on the newsgroups. There are some excellent examples which you should be able to draw inspiration from. Remember, you want to inspire those who see your signature so if you find something really inspiring, analyze it and draw from it !!!.

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Newsgroups.

The Usenet Newsgroups have always been excellent for placing information that will lead “interested people” to your site, though there are some pitfalls which you should be aware of before you go posting there.

Only Post to Relevant Newsgroups

Only post to Newsgroups which are relevant to what your site offers, or you will only solicit angry responses, flames, and even “mail bombs” !!!. For example if your site promotes a MLM scheme, look for newsgroups which relate specifically to MLM first. Don’t go posting in newsgroups like “alt.online-service” or “comp.infosystems.www.providers”.

If you have any doubt as to what is acceptable in a particular newsgroup, check their FAQ. (Frequently Asked Questions). If you can’t find their FAQ, then send a post simply asking how you can get the FAQ. Someone will help you out.

Present your Information Carefully

Be careful about how you present your information, especially in non-commercial newsgroups. You cannot blatently advertise in these types of Newsgroup. To make use of non-commercial newsgroups, you should get involved in a thread by offering good information or advice in reply to someone elses post, and use your site or Home Page address in your “Signature”. If your site contains information which will help answer someones query or problems, you can take a more direct approach and “invite them” to your site or page which has what they are looking for.


       For example, you could say something like:
       ——————————————

Dear persons-name, the exact answer to what you are looking for is on
my web site at http://www.my-site.com/relevant-page.html

Please visit my site, and email me if you have any suggestions on what
other information I could put up which would be helpful to people like
us. I hope you will find other useful info and resources there.

Best Regards - …  ( your signature file goes below here ).

Note in the above example, there are no lines exceeding 70 characters in length.

Commercial Newsgroups

Commercial Newsgroups are the places where you can get into announcing and advertising your web site, pages, products, and services !. Again, you must be sure that what you are offering is relevant to the newsgroup you are announcing or advertising in. For example if your site sells computer hardware, you could well post a blatent advertisement in “alt.business.marketplace.computers”, but not in “biz.mlm”. (unless you are offering MLM Computer Sales - unlikely !)

Newsgroups - General

Search for Newsgroups which are appropriate for making announcements and advertising, and those dealing in relevant subjects which you may not be able to blatently announce or advertise in, but can “get involved” in helping others, and by doing so, invite them to your site, or “sneak advertise” with your signature !!!.

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Free Links Sites and Pages

The Free Links pages are increasing in popularity, though some are very poorly organized (or not organized at all). Before linking your pages to one of these sites, have a good look over the site yourself to see whether or not you think a link there would be of any value.

Some of these sites only allow you to place a link on their site in return for placing a link to their site on yours. If you rate their site as poor, why would you want a link to them placed on your site ?, and then you have to ask, why would you want a link to your site placed on theirs ?.

If you rate a free link site or page as providing good value, then it may merit reciprocal links. If you provide a “links” page on your site with good, “interesting links” to others, this can attract people to re-visit your site, but if you have links to “trashy places”, this can turn people off re-visiting - so be careful about providing reciprocal links !!!.

Free Classified Ad Sites and Pages

There are thousands of Free Classifieds places on the net now, some good, and some not so good. You can think of these in a similar fashion to the free links places, except they don’t usually ask you to provide reciprocal links !. Many of these also offer fee based services, such as banner ads, bulk email, or targeted email advertising.

* WARNING * If you are not hosted by a TRULY “Bulk Email Friendly” web hosting service provider, be very careful about any form of email advertising. One single complaint can see your site taken down, and your local ISP account cancelled !. And then you will have to start from scratch with finding a new hosting provider, getting your new site on-line, and promoting all over again !!!. This can be very costly, and yes it can and has sent people BUST !.

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Bulk Email Promotion

Q.: What is Bulk Email ?.
A.: Bulk Email is any form of “Unsolicited Email Advertising or Promotion”. Commercial Bulk Email is “most frowned upon”, and unless your service providers specifically allow Bulk Email Advertising (most don’t), sending “bulk email” is a certain way to have your internet service accounts terminated !.

For this you NEED BULK EMAIL FRIENDLY Service Providers

If you want to get into “Bulk Email” promotions, you will need to find service providers for ALL YOUR Services (Webspace, E-mail, Autoresponders) who don’t just claim to be “Bulk Email Friendly”, but are willing to prove it !.

Referring to your website pages in Bulk Email advertising can get your site shut down if your Web space service provider is not “Bulk Email Friendly”. The same applies to your e-mail accounts for this purpose, your local ISP, “E-mail Autoresponders”, and any other service you use which may be connected with, referred to, or traced back to you or your ISP when using Bulk Email.

When looking for web space check their policy on bulk email advertising carefully, and even if a provider claims to allow bulk email advertising, get specific with them about it. Are they really prepared to handle the volume of complaints which you might generate !. Ask them as many questions as you can and ensure they are fully aware of your intentions before you sign up.

It is beyond the scope of this report to cover this subject in whole. Suffice to say that if you already have a web site which is not hosted by a Bulk Email Friendly service provider, DON’T attempt to promote it using this medium !. There are plenty of other ways to promote your site, just read about them in this document.

If you wish to get involved in Bulk Email sales and promote your web site in this manner, you MUST find Bulk Email Friendly service providers to provide all the services you require. These are available, and most of these providers charge a premium for these services. As bulk email is another contentious issue on the net, particularly now with the anti-spammers pushing to get this practice outlawed in some states, we are compiling a new report on this subject to cover all the latest developments.

A Footnote on Bulk Email.

As a purchaser of this document, your email details will be added to our private database so we can inform you of other new and interesting products as they become available, like our updated “Bulk Email Marketing Report”. Your email details are kept in strict confidence for our own use only, and are never disclosed or sold to any other party for any reason.

You should receive e-mail confirmation from info@ctec.co.nz that you have been added to our e-mail list within 5 days of receiving this document. If you do not receive this confirmation, please send us an e-mail to info@ctec.co.nz and include full details of when and where you purchased this document so we can update our records.

We believe “responsible promotion” by Bulk Email will have a great future. Unfortunately at present, irresponsible use of this medium has caused massive waves by the anti-spammer movements on the net, and big changes are occurring, or about to occur. All the latest developments will be available to you upon the release of our updated “Bulk Email Marketing Report”.

Back to Table of Contents

Design and Promotion Summary

Summary of Design and Promotion - Check List

Check List for Web Page Design and Promotion.

Ensure your designs are Clear, Well Organized, and Easy to Navigate

Don’t put Too Much on One Page

Design for Maximum Browser Compatibility

Structure your Site for Keyword Targeting.

Don’t Use Too Many Large Graphic Files

Maximize Use of Minimal Graphics for Keyword Targeting !.

Always Provide “Textual Links”

Frames sites - Always Provide a Non-Frames Version

Provide Maximum Contact Details on your Home Page

Provide Links Back to your Home Page from All Other Pages

Choose your Keywords Carefully - Use Plurals, Adjectives, etc.

Effectively Use Keywords - in your TITLES, Meta Tags, and Page Content

Use Meta Tags - for Keywords and Descriptions

Use META MEDIC to Check Your Meta Tags Before Submitting to Engines !.

Design your First Paragraph as an Effective Description

Use the Search Engines to Help You Choose Keywords - Check your Competition

Use Pointer Pages - as a Positioning Tool and to Multiply your Listings

Don’t Spam the Search Engines

Organize Your Submission Information into a Text Page

Submit Your Own Pages Yourself

Use Quality “Free Classified Ad” Sites to Advertise

Use Only Quality “Free Links” Sites and Pages to Promote

Use Relevant Newsgroups to Promote your site.

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Search Engines and Directories to Submit to Manually

Before Submitting to Search Engines, it is always a good idea to Check Your Meta Tags. There is a Software Tool on the internet which you can use to do this called

META MEDIC. - http://www.northernwebs.com/set/setsimjr.html - Go to this URL and check your tags NOW !. Checking them now may help save you from listing delays caused by rejected pages. Good Luck !.

I also recommend that after first submitting to Infoseek, you submit to Starting Point, What’s New on the Internet, and What’s New Too. These places are becoming very popular with people who want to look at the newest places on the internet. Then look at submitting to the other search engines and other places which will list you quickly - like Comfind, Infoseek, HotBot, AltaVista, then Lycos, Webcrawler, Excite, etc… Once you have your main submissions taken care of, if you haven’t done so already, advertise in the Newsgroups, then get to work on the Classified Ad Sites. We wish you all the best !.

URL Listings of some Major Services

Aliweb http://web.nexor.co.uk/public/aliweb/doc/search.html

Alta Vista - main page - http://www.altavista.digital.com/

Alta Vista - Submit URL Supports use of meta tags - http://www.altavista.digital.com/av/content/addurl.htm

Apollo - main page - http://apollo.co.uk/
Apollo - Submit URL - http://apollo.co.uk/submit.htm

Aqui is a “link to others” in their index service. You may not find this appropriate, but this is interesting so is included here.
Aqui Index - http://www.aqui.ibm.com/aqui/index.html

Aqui Add Link - http://www.aqui.ibm.com/cgi-bin/add

Bigbook YP - a Yellow pages service which offers a free information listing.
BigBook Yellow Pages (Were Offering Free Home Pages) http://www.bigbook.com/

Bizwiz - A business to business and links service with a business news service.
BizWiz Add Link - http://www.bizwiz.com/touch/add-link.htm
BizWiz Submit It - http://www.bizwiz.com/cgi-bin/rbox/submitit.pl

CityScape Global Online Directory - Provides Free Advert Pages
Cityscape Global Online Directory - Search - http://www.gold.net/gold/search2.html CityScape is CLOSED until further notice. We have not been able to find out why and whether or not they will be coming back on-line, so this entry will be left in here until we find out just what is happening !.

Comfind - main page - http://www.comfind.com/
Comfind - Submit URL - http://www.comfind.com/intro.html

Dejanews - http://www.dejanews.com/ - Free Classifieds provided by classifieds2000.com

Euroseek - main page (UK) - http://www.euroseek.net/uk/
Euroseek - Submit URL - http://www.euroseek.net/uk/addurl.htm

  It can be impossible to get Euroseek's addurl or feedback pages.
  email them at euroseek@freeside.net
  Feedback page at http://www.euroseek.net/uk/feedback.htm

Excite - main page - http://www.excite.com/
Excite Submit URL - http://www.excite.com/Info/add_url.html

HotBot - main page - http://www.hotbot.com/
HotBot Submit URL - http://www.hotbot.com/addurl.html
HotBot says they will index your URLs in 48 Hours, and they do a complete reindex of their database every 2 weeks.

Infoseek - main page - http://www.infoseek.com/
Infoseek Add URL - http://www.infoseek.com/AddUrl?pg=DCaddurl.html

Infoseek Ultraseek - Search - http://www.infoseek.com/Home?pg=ultra_home.html
Infoseek Guide - http://guide.infoseek.com/
Infoseek Guide Add URL - http://guide.infoseek.com/AddUrl?pg=DCaddurl.html
Infoseek supports use of meta tags, and may list your pages within minutes.

InfoSpace - http://www.infospace.com/

Linkstar is a Business Directory with web site registration.
Linkstar - http://www.linkstar.com/
Linkstar Add Site - http://www.linkstar.com/linkstar/bin/doform?form=ecard

Lycos - main page - http://www.lycos.com/
Lycos Add URL - http://www.lycos.com/addasite.html

Lycos now offers Instant Spidering, but your site generally takes 2 - 4 weeks to show up in their indexes.

Metacrawler is NOT a search engine itself, so you CANNOT Submit a URL Here. It is a place where you can launch your search to several engines at the same time, which can be very handy !.
MetaCrawler - http://www.metacrawler.com/

MetroScope - main page - http://www.metroscope.com/
MetroScope Submit Site - http://metroscope.com/addsite.html

New Riders Yellow Pages Directory - http://www.mcp.com/newriders/wwwyp/

New Riders Submission Form - http://www.mcp.com/directories/ypsubmit.html

Open Text Index - main page - http://www.opentext.com/
Open Text Index - Alternative main page address - http://index.opentext.net/
Open Text Index Submit URL - http://index.opentext.net/main/submitURL.html

Starting Point - main page - http://www.stpt.com/

Starting Point Submission Form - http://www.stpt.com/general/submit.html
Starting Point say they will list your site in their “New Sites” in around 1 Hour !.

What’s New on the Internet is a Continuously updated Global Directory of New Web sites.
What’s New on the Internet - main page - http://www.whatsnew.com/
What’s New on the Internet Submission Form - http://www.whatsnew.com/whatsnew/submit/
Submit your Main Home page to What’s New on the Internet, and they say it will be listed in 24 Hours.

What’s New Too - main page - http://newtoo.manifest.com/
What’s New Too - Description of Categories - http://newtoo.manifest.com/categories.html
What’s New Too Submission page - http://newtoo.manifest.com/submit.html Submissions to What’s New Too are listed within 36 Hours.

Yahoo - main page - http://www.yahoo.com/

Yahoo - Document titled “Add to Yahoo” - http://www.yahoo.com/bin/add?
Read this before submitting to Yahoo, Instructions on how to add your URL, and links to other documents you may need to read also.
Yahoo - Document titled “How to Suggest Your Site”. - http://www.yahoo.com/docs/info/include.html
You should also read this document before submitting to Yahoo!

Yellow Pages Online - http://www.ypo.com/

Webcrawler - main page - http://www.webcrawler.com/

Webcrawler Add URL page - http://webcrawler.com/Help/GetListed/AddURLS.html
Webcrawler Check URL Status page - http://webcrawler.com/Help/GetListed/Status.html
Webcrawler Alternat Submit URL page - http://webcrawler.com/WebCrawler/SubmitURLS.html

WWW Worm Old main page - http://wwwmcb.cs.colorado.edu/home/mcbryan/
WWW Worm Old Add URL - http://wwwmcb.cs.colorado.edu/home/mcbryan/WWWWadd.html

WWW Worm New main page at http://www.goto.com/
WWW Worm New Add URL page at http://www.goto.com/WWWWadd.html

Back to Table of Contents

Comments on Search Engines and Directories

Always bear in mind that some search engines are “Case Sensitive”. So searching for “home based business” on such an engine may not return the same results as searching for “Home Based Business” or “HOME BASED BUSINESS” To tell if a search engine is case sensitive, simply perform searches using the same keywords in upper and lower case, and compare the results for each. You may be surprised to see some pages get top listing under mixed case, lower case, and upper case searches in a case sensitive engine. When you do, study their code carefully - they have done an excellent job of Web Page Design !.

Altavista

Altavista is one of the premier search engines. They provide advanced search facilities for those wanting to “powersearch”, and boast one of the largest collections with quick retrieval. This engine makes use of META-TAGS for keywords and descriptions. AltaVista say that you only need to submit your top home page here, and their robot will “spider” the rest of your site. You may also want to submit other “Key Pages” from your site, even if you come back every couple of days and submit another page, it can be a lot quicker than waiting for your site to be spidered by their robot !. One thing to be aware of here is their engine is “Case Sensitive”. So you need to be very careful about use of capitals in your Keywords and Meta Tags, as well as your page content. Try and think about what people are likely to type at their keyboards !.

BizWiz

BizWiz is somewhere you can place free ads, and list your URLs. This site appears to be geared toward “business to business” links in particular, but also has a place for business/entrepreneur to end users and classifieds. Be prepared to spend a little time going through their submission process, it’s not one of the quick easy ones - get the major engines done first !.

Euroseek

Euroseek claims to be the European Search Engine for Europeans. The user interface is available in over twenty European languages. Searches can be limited to one of those languages, and to specific european countries, regions, or domains. Entire documents are indexed and saved in their original language and localized fonts. Euroseek claims the ability to index 18 million pages per week. They do not provide information on how many pages they actually have indexed in their database. This engine also claims to be the fastest in the world. Their “add url” and feedback pages can be impossible to access. This may be to do with where you access them from. However, if you have problems here, email them at euroseek@freeside.net

Excite

Excite claims to have over 50 million web pages indexed. Excite also has reviews of over 25,000 web sites. This engine is not case sensitive, and provides excellent relevancy rankings, with clear, easily read results. You can also search newsgroups with this engine. Excite acquired Webcrawler a while back, so as you would expect, their search results provide a “Try this Search on Webcrawler” button at the bottom of the page. Excite is certainly another priority one site - Get Listed ASAP !.

HotBot

Hotbot is one of the leading search engines on the web today. Get Listed Here as a Priority - HotBot says they will index your URLs in 48 Hours, and they reindex their complete database every 2 weeks. They claim to have over 38 million web documents indexed. I would say this number could be suspect due to the number of duplicate documents that appear to be in their database. You can get search results which are ranked with a very high degree of relevancy. Hotbot also provides a “modify” capability which allows you to add additional filters to search terms, effectively allowing you to customize the engine. Another feature of this engine allows you to search for pages with particular types of media content such as Java, Shockwave, and VRML. HotBot is not case sensitive, but CAPS can still cause some problems for the inexperienced surfer. For example, if you left your CAPS LOCK ON and tried searching for HORSES AND PONIES, the search would fail unless you had changed the search options from “All the Words” to “Boolean”. This search engine doesn’t like AND being typed in capitals unless the search options are set to Boolean !.

Infoseek

Infoseek is definitely in the top rankings of the search engines. I have listed URLs for the Infoseek Home Page, Infoseek Ultraseek page, Infoseek Guide, and their Add URL pages. The Infoseek engine makes use of META-TAGS, and you need to submit the URLs for each of your pages. If you have over 50 pages to submit, Infoseek asks that you submit them by e-mail. Don’t submit by e-mail because it will take much longer to get you listed - just spread your submissions over a few days. You should submit here as a priority !. Infoseek also has a “Check Status” page for checking your submissions. This may appear to be handy, but if your pages don’t show up within a reasonable time, I wouldn’t place too much faith in the status report. You may need to re-submit your pages. I have had to re-submit pages here before, and the second time they have stayed listed. If pages keep getting dumped off from this engine, contact their tech support for help. The Infoseek engine is case sensitive. DON’T Submit the SAME PAGE more than ONCE in a 24 Hour Period !. This could make them angry, and they might ban your pages !.
List in Infoseek Immediately !.

Lycos

Lycos is another place you should list yourself in as priority . Lycos now offers instant spidering (their robot should instantly visit your site) but your pages will still generally take 2 to 4 weeks to show up in their indexes. This search engine has been highly under rated by others in recent times. You should visit Lycos and check it out for yourself. The Lycos engine is not case sensitive.

Open Text Index

Open Text Index claims to have as many pages indexed as Lycos. Their robot does not index sites, so you have to submit the URL for every page you want indexed. They promise to include your submissions within 2 weeks, so get listed here as quickly as you can. Their engine indexes every word on every page. The search interface is simple, and returns results which are ranked with good relevancy. There is a power search option available to refine searches. This is an Important Site to submit to. Did you know that Yahoo uses the Open Text Search Engine ?. The Open Text engine is not case sensitive.

Webcrawler

Webcrawler is another of the great search engines, with both simple and advanced search capabilities. You can choose to display titles only, or titles and summaries in the search results, which provide good relevance rankings. This engine is not case sensitive. Webcrawler was acquired by Excite a while back, so naturally they provide a “launch this search on Excite” button at the bottom of your search results. Webcrawlers &qout;Check URL Status” tool allows you to check whether a URL is listed in their Database, and if so, when it was last visited by their spider. Webcrawler says their spider doesn’t dig through your web site and index all your pages, but recommend you only submit the URLs for the Main Sections of your site. If you don’t have hundereds of pages, I recommend you submit them all !. Get listed on Webcrawler as a priority !!!.

WWW Worm

The World Wide Web Worm appears to be in the process of moving - a new URL address http://www.goto.com/ has been put up on the home page. This new URL appears to have the same interface and submission process. I hope its performance will be better than to old overworked and slow server. The old engine (still there) only stores URLs and Titles, so large search results could be retrieved very quickly if the server was not overworked. You can submit your URL to this engine, but this robot does not seem to get updated very often. You can expect a long wait before your pages show up in the old engine if ever. If you submit to the old WWW Worm, also submit to http://www.goto.com/WWWWadd.html

Web Site Design for Top Search Engine Positioning

Case Sensitivity References

Keys to Gaining Top Search Engine Positioning - Introduction

Web Design for Top Search Engine Positioning covers:

Keys to Gaining Top Search Engine Positioning - Overview.

Overview

Site Clarity and Browser Compatibility.

Correct, Maximum Use of Minimal Graphics and Keyword Targeting

Always Provide Textual Links and Descriptions

This is what the above Example Code produces

Check This Out !

Try out the following:

Ensure Compatibility with the Widest Range of Browser Software

Site Design - General, Navigation and Home Pages

How many pages should I use ?.

What should I put on my Home Page ?.

How should, I organize links between pages ?.

Spamming - What it is and why you shouldn’t !!!.

What is Search Engine Spamming ?.

Why shouldn’t I “spam” the Search Engines ?.

How can I Compete with the Spammers ? - I see others getting away with it.

How can I spam without getting my pages or site banned ?.

So why do people spam ?.

Title & Keyword Ranking - How does a search engine rank the TITLE and KEYWORDS ?.

Title - Examples

META TAGS - Guerilla Marketing using “keyword” and “description” meta tags.

Keyword meta tags - and Choosing Your Keywords.

Your Best Tool - The Search Engines

Keyword Packing. (A Technique Considered as Spamming)

Multiple Listings by changing your Title.

Submitting Your Pages to Search Engines and Directories.

It often pays to take things slowly to begin with. I recommend submitting to Infoseek first. Your pages will list almost INSTANTLY !. You can check your position, check your competition, then spend a day or two working on modifications to list your pages higher. Then re-submit to Infoseek.

You need to arrange a list of “Keywords”. These should be listed in order of importance, so if there is a limit which prevents you from submitting all your keywords the most important ones will take precidence.

Title:

#1 Computer Tape Hardware Media and Software Solutions

URL:

http://www.number-1.com/solution-1.html

Very Short Description (10 Words Max):

Computer Tape Hardware, Media, Backup and Data Conversion Software Solutions.

Short Description:

Our full range of Computer Tape Hardware, Media, Backup and Data Conversion software solutions can be tailored to meet the most demanding requirements. All products carry full manufacturers guarantees, and free phone / fax support for all software products.

Long Description:

Keywords:

Magnetic Tape SCSI Computer Hardware Software QIC DAT DLT 8mm Video 9-Track, Computer Backup, Data Conversion, Magnetic Helical Scan, Tape Hardware, Backup Software, 8mm Video 9-Track 1600 3200 6250 Digital

Categories:

Computers Computer Hardware

—————————

You must proof read and edit your data very carefully !!!. You DO NOT want to submit a page with misspelled keywords, or an incorrect URL to 30 or so search engines, that would be a disaster !.

In the above example, for short descriptions requiring 25 words or less, we could use just the first sentence of our “Short Description”. Note that the information is laid out in a form that you could use to submit by e-mail to those search engines which require this.

To summarise, you will need to organize the following into a text page so you can easily “copy and paste” the required information into the submission forms as necessary.

In many cases, the only information a “Robot” will require is the “Full URL” (complete address) for your page(s). For example:

http://www.mysite.com/~myusername/mypage.html

Always have “complete information” ready for submission as described in the above section

Directories and Guides.

Other Places and Techniques to Promote Your Site.

The first thing you need to do is create a good “signature file” which you use in all your E-mail and Newsgroup postings. In the signature file, you literally “advertise your site or home page” !.

Large amounts of traffic and sales can be generated by using a good signature file which directs people to your site.

In some cases you will need to create your signature file with a plain text editor, then configure your software to use this file. Some software packages such as Pegasus Mail allow you to create multiple signature files from within the package itself.

The Usenet Newsgroups have always been excellent for placing information that will lead “interested people” to your site, though there are some pitfalls which you should be aware of before you go posting there.

If you have any doubt as to what is acceptable in a particular newsgroup, check their FAQ. (Frequently Asked Questions). If you can’t find their FAQ, then send a post simply asking how you can get the FAQ. Someone will help you out.

Note in the above example, there are no lines exceeding 70 characters in length.

Free Links Sites and Pages

The Free Links pages are increasing in popularity, though some are very poorly organized (or not organized at all). Before linking your pages to one of these sites, have a good look over the site yourself to see whether or not you think a link there would be of any value.

Some of these sites only allow you to place a link on their site in return for placing a link to their site on yours. If you rate their site as poor, why would you want a link to them placed on your site ?, and then you have to ask, why would you want a link to your site placed on theirs ?.

Free Classified Ad Sites and Pages

Bulk Email Promotion

If you want to get into “Bulk Email” promotions, you will need to find service providers for ALL YOUR Services (Webspace, E-mail, Autoresponders) who don’t just claim to be “Bulk Email Friendly”, but are willing to prove it !.

Computers
Computer Hardware

You must proof read and edit your data very carefully !!!.
You DO NOT want to submit a page with misspelled keywords, or an incorrect URL to 30 or so search engines, that would be a disaster !.