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Search Engines 101
Right here is our real challenge, If you really want
to succeeded for free it is search engines that will push you to the top,
there are other ways that are very efficient but somewhat expensive at the
same time.
Here we will teach you to get ranked on major search engines, believe
it or not you don't even have to visit a search engine to get ranked on
it, It is all in your website.
| Optional: What you find on
this page is not the usual things you find on other guides, Most of
the information you are going to find here are the same facts and
theories search engine optimization companies charge you to do, Yes
they do have more than this but if you understand how to make use of
the information on this page you would probably not need there help. |
Getting ranked in search engines is hard, you are competing with
billions of pages on the internet on very limited keywords that work, Sure
you can rank easily for a search term like your name, that is if your name
is uncommon and you are searching for the entire name, But if your name is
john and you want to rank on the term john alone, it is probably one of
the hardest tasks you can imagine.
Being listed anywhere but in the first three pages for any search term
is useless, if you have searched the internet before you probably know
that by now, I hope you get the general idea, now lets get down to
business.
There are many routs to choose from, Here is our plan (i have done this
time and time again so if you don't understand why at some point, Just go
ahead and follow the instructions, You will learn why later)
You will never have to submit your website to a search engines, Why,
because search engines might consider you a spammer and your website
blocked forever from search results. Even though this is most unlikely,
why would you want to risk it if the alternative plan is better ?
90% of your success in getting a good ranking in search engines is your
website itself, 10% are other factors.
| Optional: How search engines work and how they rank
websites and so on is a closely kept secret and it differs from one
engine to the other, experienced web masters know how to make search
engines work for them, but they don't know how they work. Algorithms
change fast, You are left with one choice after all this, do
what you know as a fact can not be harmful, and please follow all
instructions on this page, they are all important, i know your time
is important but you have to do what you have to do. |
Lets start with your website, what do you have to do to get the search
engine to like your website?
The answer is fairly simple, Follow the HTML standards and a few more
tips.
1- Navigation: Your website navigation should reach the search engine
as HTML, don't and don't use any other navigation form, search
engines can not break into a web object (like macromedia flash) and find
the links. Your website will remain un-indexed if you do, or if it is
indexed, it will not be seen as one part. Use a simple navigation and a
get to anywhere from anywhere approach (the same navigation pane on every
page)
Implementing Navigation in HTML
First you should understand some very simple terms
First level - root level,
Second level, third
level and so on
http://www.buildguide.net/index.htm is a root level document or
a first level document
http://www.buildguide.net/download/index.htm is a second level
document
http://www.buildguide.net/download/fun/index.htm is a third level
document
and so on. A very good approach when you have a big website is to make
what we would call sub webs, subweb are those folders on your first level,
the files inside are second level documents, all pages on your website should have a
navigation panel to all entrance files on every subweb, pages that belong to the same subweb
should have a navigation pane for that specific subweb, meaning you will
have two navigation panels on every page, one for the entire website, and
another for the subweb the page belongs to, For a live example check out
http://www.info2device/funweb/games/index.htm and see how the
navigation there is made, the website navigation is at the top, this is
common to all pages on info2device.com,
the other navigation for the funweb is on the left, the subweb (funweb)
navigation. This website is a one level website, that is why we have it
done differently, On the left we have links to every guide page, on the
other navigation panel we have links to resource guide pages, while the
navigation on the top sends you either back home or to another website
(our other websites), Such a technique yields superb results in terms of
search engine compatibility but only works with smaller websites like this
one, you can make one navigation panel for all pages on the website,
leading to even better results.
2- Get those META tags on every page, on a website i made, search
engine ranking increased from spot 18 to spot 4 on a certain keyword after
adding the meta tags to the page concerned (on a particular major search
engine) (A few days later when the new page was indexed).
Some engines will not include your website unless you have meta tags,
Inktomy a very important search provider says it will index both full text
and Meta tags, ExactSeek will not index your website altogether if you
don't have meta tags. Google is said to rank your website with thousands
of variables in mind, HTML perfection is one of them, meta tags are one
more factor towards perfection, in fact they are basic steps
You should note that search engines do not rely on META tags, they used
to but stopped since people started spamming search engines with
irrelevant keywords and descriptions. Even more, now some search engines
might penalize you for using irrelevant tags (don't panic, just do what
you have to do, search engines are complex algorithms so don't jump to any
conclusion).
Meta tags are Very Very important in websites that rely on graphics and
flash for content, the search engine does not really understand pictures,
so in this case it would be relying on meta tags to properly index and
categorize your website
| The most important meta tags are the " keywords "
meta tag and " description " meta tag, "robots" is a guiding meta
tag that can be very useful here is how to use them.
You might be using a website building software like Microsoft
FrontPage to create your website, Whatever the software you are
using may be, you can usually if not always open the HTML source
with that software, if not, use note pad to edit the .htm or .html
document.
Once you are there, you will find a <head> tag and a few lines
after that you will find a </head> tag, the cod you see under should
be placed right after the first (the <head> tag)
<meta name="keywords" content="The keywords
related to the page separated by spaces">
<meta name="description" content="A
description of the page">
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow" Meta robots is a guide
for the crawler, index means index this page and noindex means
don't, follow means follow all links in page nofollow means don't, A
space between (index, follow) is an error, for some engines, this
error is
worse than not having it altogether. Notes: Every keyword in the
keyword meta tag must at least appear once in your content or text,
even if you have to write it in hidden text (white text on white
background for example) Meta tags MUST NOT contain line breaks or
they will be considered bad code! |
I would advise you to make those meta tags as you go, if you build a
large website it is often harder to go back and determine the tag contents
for everything backwards, You would be more efficient inserting those tags
right after you finish editing (or creating) that page.
3- Less important Than meta tags but could give your ranking a push are
Heading tags, Alt Tags, Title attributes.
Such tags that should come with links and heading tags are usually not
there on most websites, i would advise you to take some time to do them
properly, not only will they boost your search engine ranking, they will
also help navigation and readability concerns your website.
ALT TAGS
Alt tags are tags that should be used with any graphic in your web
page, Before the picture loads or when the pictures in the visitors
browser are disabled, the text in this tag will appear, when your mouse is
over the image, wait for a few seconds and you will get a tip on the
graphic under the cursor !
So what should you write in those tags, ALT Tags should be short, and
descriptive, since search engines do not understand pictures, those tags
should tell the search engine what this picture is, and for those visitors
as well.
| How to
implement alt tags this code will show a picture in your page
<img src="error_banger.gif"> ==>
this picture will take you no where if you click it and will show
you nothing if your mouse is placed above it !
This code specifies a bit more. it will force the browser to show
the image in correct proportions of your choice. it will also link
to an error page, and it has our important ALT TAG
<a href="error.htm">
<img border="0" src="error_banger.gif" alt="You have encountered
an error" width="98" height="98"></a> |
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Having this also helps search engines understand what the page
you are linking to is about! So now the crawler will understand that
error.htm is a page indicated that "You have encountered an error"
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Heading Tags
Heading tags are a very neat alternative to specifying the font size
and bold and italics, what's really important about that is that search
engines understand the importance of a word in your page from the heading
tags, where HEADING 1 is very big bold letter, and HEADING 5 is small text
that is BOLD ! So whenever headings do the job, Use them.
<h3>Text in this section will have a heading 3
size</h3>Text in this section will have a heading 3
sizeH1 H2 H3 H4 H5
H6 |
4- The all important home page first: (SP4)
5- Optimizing more and more (SP4)
6- Stay away from mini websites or portals to promote your website
(SP7)
- Get linked to but not from anyone ! (SP3)
- Go ahead and link to others but not to anyone! (SP3)
- Make sure your web host is not banned by IP ! Also make sure they
have a strict policy on spamming and illegal content.
MORE: A free search engine submission system
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