Publicize Your Web Page
OK so you got your page on the web, now what? With nearly a million pages a day being added to the web, the real trick is to get the word out that your page exists.
Web pages aren't automatically searchable when published. There are several ways to get listed in the Internet's numerous search engines (also called "directories" - like yellow page listings). This mini-tutorial covers registering with search engines and directories, using Meta tags, making the most of link exchanges, understanding Google PageRank, and the basics of Web Position also called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
With the number of web sites being added to the web every day, it is advisable to try all of these methods:
Register With Search Engines
Go to any Internet search engine and use their "Add URL" feature to submit the name, location and a description of your web site. There are several main engines and you can find them listed at Netscape's "Internet Search" page (among other places):
http://home.netscape.com/home/internet-search.html
Here's a listing of some of the URLs:
Google: http://www.google.com/addurl.html
Alta Vista: http://altavista.digital.com/addurl.htm
Add your site to America Online's "AOL.Com Search"
http://search.aol.com/add.adp
Add your site to "Excite"
http://www.excite.com/Info/add_url.html?a-m-t
Add your site to "Lycos/Hotbot"
http://hotbot.lycos.com/addurl.asp
Add your site to "MSN"
http://free.submit-it.com/msnsubmit.htm
Add your site to "Northern Light"
http://www.northernlight.com/docs/regurl_help.html
Add your site to "WebCrawler" http://webcrawler.com/Help/GetListed/AddURLS.html
Submit your URL
Submit your URL (web page address) to many search engines at once using services like "Submit It!"
http://www.submit-it.com
This tool allows you to enter all your web site information into a form. Like Page Title, URL address, city, state, contact name, email contact and a description (usually 25 words or less).
Another example of this type of service is http://www.addme.com.
Beware of submission services that charge you a fee to submit you to "thousands" of search engines. There are only a handfull of major search engines. Adding your URL to obscure search tools that nobody uses won't help publicize your site.
Put descriptions in your HTML document
Many search engines automatically send out "spiders" to scan for newly uploaded web pages, and list them according to what's in their HTML code. This makes it important for you to have descriptive page titles and content. -- If you use a main graphic on your home page that contains words about your site, be sure to use the "alt" option for text in your IMG tag. For example: < IMG SRC="myhomegraphic.gif" alt="My Home Page - the place for the best XXX product on the net"> The search engine "spider" will read this and include it as part of the page description.
Use META tags
You can make your page more easily findable in search engines by adding meta tags to it.Your meta tags should go in the HEADer part of your document after your title. Because of this, it can be difficult to add meta tags with web many web authoring tools that don't allow you to add HTML.
Try adding these tags:
<.META NAME="Author" CONTENT="YourNameHere">
<.META NAME="Description" CONTENT="A description of your site goes here">
<.META NAME="KeyWords" CONTENT="keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3, etc">
Keywords should be added in order of importance. Try to think up words that folks would naturally use if trying to find a site like yours. Also try to come up with some very specific and unique words as very general words get so many hits you could find yourself at the bottom of a pile of 30,000 web pages :).
To learn more about META tags, visit any of these sites:
Meta Tag Tutorials -
http://htmlgoodies.earthweb.com/tutors/meta.html
http://www.webdeveloper.com/categories/html/html_metatags.html
A Dictionary of HTML META Tags - http://vancouver-webpages.com/META/
To have META tags generated for you, visit these sites:
AddMe's Meta-Tag Generator - www.addme.com/meta.htm
SiteUp's Meta-Tag Generator - http://www.siteup.com/meta.html
Submit your site to Web Directories
Web directories list websites by category or topic. Many of the most popular search tools also have directory listings. Google and Yahoo are good examples. Many search tools don't rely upon their own staff to categorize websites. Instead, they base their listings on DMOZ: The Open Directory Project. Because of this, it's important for you to get your site listed in the appropriate DMOZ category. To do so, visit the site http://dmoz.org/add.html and follow the directions.
You may also want to submit to smaller directories such as HotRate http://www.hotrate.com/ and AllTheWeb http://www.alltheweb.com/add_url.php
Join webrings or link exchanges
When you find pages on the web that are on-topic or useful to your site, write to the author of the page proposing an exchange of links. While this process can be automated, it can also be as simple as you creating a normal HTML link to his page and his doing the same back to yours.
For something a bit more sophisticated, consider Web Rings.
Web rings link similar pages together. Visitors can cycle through these pages easily. Here's a link to Ringsurf, one of the most popular free webring providers - http://www.ringsurf.com.
Understand Google Page Rank
Google uses PageRank to determine where your site will appear in search results. You'll find more information about it at: http://www.google.com/technology/.
The goal is to get your page as highly ranked as possible. Ranking can go from 0 to 10. Google uses a complex and highly guarded formula. But at its core is the idea of seeing how many other websites are linking TO YOU. For this reason, you want to get people with related-topics to link to you (see section on link exchanges).
Other Resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank
http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html
You can look up your page rank. If you've just published your site, it will probably be zero.
http://www.google-pagerank.net/.
Web Positioning & SEO
"Web Positioning" or "Search Engine Optimization (SEO)" is something like PageRank on a larger scale. The idea behind it is to get your website ranked as highly as possible in all of the major search engines.
Because most search engines change their algorithms for ranking sites, this isn't something you do once then forget about. It's an ongoing process.
You'll find a detailed tutorial at:
http://www.sofer.com/research/searchmain.html
You'll find additional information at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization.