Dave and Karen Petty
A guide to getting listed in search engines

  Whatever you do, it's not quick and there's no easy solution. Companies who claim to have the secret should be treated cautiously, most of what they do can be done yourself for a lot less cost. At least you'll know what's being done in your name if you do it yourself. Equally, what's worked for me may not work for you, experiment until you get it right.

• Use the submission links for Google, MSN, Yahoo and DMOZ. It's free and it will get your site crawled, although you may have to wait a while before DMOZ lists you these.
• Use your meta tags
  • <meta name="robots" content="index,follow"> tells the robots to index your site and follow your links
  • <meta name="revisit-after" content="7 days"> tells them when to come back for another look
  • Make sure you have descriptions and keywords in your HTML head section
• Don't use images and javascript for your menus and links, the search engines can't follow them. Make sure you create a site map, and direct viewers to it with a <noscript> tag
• Content is King - that's what everyone seems to believe and it makes sense. Use text styles such as different headings to create a stylish layout. Put text information on the page, images don't mean much to the search engines. Make sure that your keywords are repeated in your text, but try to make your text readable. If the site is rubbish, people will only visit once and they won't look around
• Update your site often and reload it to the web
• Links are good, especially unsolicited incoming links. Don't go overboard and fill pages with links, it looks rubbish and people won't come back.
• If it's a commercial site, make it easy to browse and buy from. Happy customers buy again and tell their friends about it. Word of mouth is a great way to get more sales and it's a lot better than relying on the search engines.

Keep trying, submit to any search engine which targets the sort of subject you have in your website. Try the free submission engines which claim to do it all for you, any link is probably a good one. Good luck.

Pictures and text are copyright © Dave & Karen Petty- All Rights Reserved, please don't copy anything without our permission. Thanks, D & K.