Index

• Q/A.
• What are the Major Search Engines?
• Prepare your site.
• Multiple submissions.
• Link Exchange.
• Rings.

Q/A

• Question: What does Search Engine submission do for you if you are placed as number 125 or number 600?
  Answer: Not much. No matter how interested you are in a subject, it is the truly rare person who will wade through more than, say, 30 entries... 100 tops.

• Question:After you submit your page, how long does it take to show up with the search engine?
  Answer: Depends. Some Search Engines spider you immediately so that you show up in 2 to 4 days. On others, you don't show up for 2 to 6 weeks.

• Question:Do your words or content effect your placement?
  Answer:Yes! You need to think about what words people will use to search for and find your site. If there are thousands of "My Home Page" titles, you will have a hard time getting a good placement.
  Do you want people to find your site by your name? By your subject? A "unique" word or words will help your rating. If your name is very common like "Mary Stewart", that isn't going to help much.
  After you have chosen your keywords, search for them on the search engines. Note how the top pages display them.

• Question:Will word spamming help?
  Answer:Yes and no. A few search engines still allow tricks. Most are becoming very anti-spamming. Those will either penalize you severely for it or simple refuse to list you. However, it still works with some.
  Spamming tricks. (By the way, I don't recommend this.)
  • Repeat your favorite search words many many times at the botom of your site. For instance, in your text, define a FONT COLOR the same as your background. Define the FONT SIZE as really small. This will not show up to the visitors (unless they "select" that area.)
  • Repeat your keywords in the META tags many times.
  • List common keywords that many people search for. Some search engines ignore keywords that are not repeated in the text. (Trying to discourage spammers, some ignore keywords that appear over 3 times in the text.)

• What are the Major Search Engines?

  
  WHAT'S THE BUZZ?
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  Media Metrix reports that over twenty-two million unique visitors 
  visited the Internet's estimated 530 search engines in January 1998,
  achieving a combined reach of sixty percent of the entire Internet's
  population! This ever-broadening reach identifies why search engines 
  account for nearly half of all Internet ad revenues. January's reach 
  and unique visitor statistics for the top-ranked search engines are 
  shown below as provided by Media Metrix, Inc.
  
  Rank   Search Engine      Reach (%)    Unique Visitors (millions)
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
   1.   Yahoo!               41.5                  15.2
   2.   Excite               20.7                   7.6
   3.   InfoSeek             17.3                   6.3
   4.   Lycos                12.7                   4.7
   5.   AltaVista             9.2                   3.4
   6.   WebCrawler            7.6                   2.8
   7.   HotBot                5.4                   2.0
   8.   Search.com            3.5                   1.3
   9.   LookSmart             2.8                   1.0
  10.   Deja News             1.9                   0.7
  11.   NorthernLight         No Stats
  
  

  Media Metrix also reports that surfers rely on multiple engines for their searching needs.

  YAHOO IS NOT A SEARCH ENGINE!

  Yahoo CATALOGUES data. It doesn't use the same database/search paradigm that the search engines use. Yahoo is a special case. DON'T SUBMIT TO YAHOO MORE THAN ONCE or they will reject you. Figuring out the best categories is critical. They are sooo picky: why bother? Because they ARE number one!

• Prepare your site.

  Before you submit your site to the search engines, prepare it so that it will have a chance for good placement. Study how.
  • Define what keywords you want to be found with.
  • Very Important: Put your page title in the TITLE tag. Not only does this contain the words that people read in their bookmark list, but most search engines figure in TITLE words for word relevancy.
  • Insert the META tags that define DESCRIPTION and KEYWORDS. You insert your definitions instead of the red type.
    <META NAME="description" CONTENT="What you want the search engines to say about your site.">
    <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="WORD1, WORD2">

  • Use ALL CAPS for KEYWORDS. Separate the words with commas AND a space. Some search engines delimit keywords with commas and some delimit with spaces. Being a "belt and suspenders" sort of gal, I do both.
  I highly suggest that you keep a personal tracking notebook.
  • Name of HTMLs submitted.
  • Date submitted.
  • Which search engines you submitted to.
  • Length of time before you showed up.
  • Your placement number from the top.
  1. Search Engine Tips by SUBMIT IT! covers the basics.

  2. Explore Search Engine Watch for more information.

  3. For commercial pages: Web Site Marketing Primer.

  4. The SUBMIT IT! list of where to announce your web site.

• Multiple submissions.

  You don't have to use a free batch service. You can request placement by logging into the search engine, usually take the ADD link, and follow directions.
  Rather than a batch submittal, I submit here individually. FREE!
  I haven't tried this one:

• Link Exchange.

  If you want someone to track your site usage, daily and monthly, and give you some nice bar charts, join the Link Exchange free. To get this, you must create a banner to give them and put up their banner on your page.
  They point you in the right direction to where you can create your own banner.

• Rings.

  You know how much work your site took. You want to share it with others. A ring is a good way to share with like-minded webmasters.
  • Search for the ring that says "YOU" using a search engine. Yahoo has some suggestions.

  • Look in your site server's user information for a listing of rings. For instance, FortuneCity only and Geocities have many rings.

  • To participate in a ring, you must join, submit a site description and post a ring logo on your site.

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since 2/24/1998