Learn how submitting to Search Engines and Directories will help you promote your business effectively. For the latest in search engine news, be sure to visit Search Engine Watch!

And then after you get to a point & think you finally have a grasp on this "search engine thing" - it all changes!

So what are you gonna do?  Well - you're going to read through everything offered here and go away with a better understanding of what makes these search engines tick.

Whether you are in charge of your website or choose to have someone else design, submit and promote your site - it's very important for you to educate yourself. You want to be in a position to monitor the process and ensure your site is optimized for maximum exposure..

» Submit your site manually to the most popular search engines and directories.

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The Short Story ...

Engine placement is an important issue for a website. An estimated 60% - 80% of your site traffic will result from engine and directory searches - the single greatest source.  Submittal to search engines and directories is a process that should be performed regularly and monitored routinely.

Making sure your keywords, meta tags and descriptions are in order - provides one important and (somewhat) controllable method for good search engine placement. Properly designed web pages are another factor in what most search engines look for. The general consensus is - that the following design considerations will help your pages in getting a higher rating.

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General Design Tips
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• Having solid content on your web page is essential. Engines do not favor "picture pages" that are used for an introduction to a site.
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• Engines vary but generally content should contain 200 - 800 words.  Content also effects "relevancy ratios".
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• Don't use page frames unless you are an expert in design. Most engines do not properly index or follow their links. 
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• Don't create indexing obstacles. Most search engines can't follow imagemap links to find the rest of your pages. Use hypertext links for navigation if possible or include as an alternate.
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• If you suspect engines may have difficulty finding/indexing your pages - provide a "Site Map" with all pages hypertext linked.
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• Use the robots meta tag set to "ALL" which will allow an engine's spider to both index that page and follow it's links. If you have a page you want excluded from being spidered.
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• Include an external links page within your site and seek reciprocal links.  Links to your site from others will help you with the search engines on their measure of your "popularity". It also gives another opportunity to display keywords in the names or descriptions of the links you display. Studies have shown that links "to your pages" is the second largest source of generating traffic to your business website.

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» submit to these search engines