Schewanick Computer Services

Naturally, you ask "how?". You might think this is a lot of hype, but its
not. My Ecommerce web site gets well over that number of hits every month and
I don't even purchase banner space anywhere on the Internet. So, how do I do
it. It's simple. Search Engine Submissions

I'm sure you've seen numerous companies claiming that by submitting your site
to 1000+ search engines, that you will get tons more traffic to your web
site. Is this true? Maybe. But wait, you just said that the success of
gummylump.com was due to search engine submissions. Right. Let me explain.

You can submit your web site to 1000 search engines a day, every single day
for the next year and never get a good ranking in any of them. How come?
There is a lot of work to be done before you submit your site. I like to
think of it as 3 Steps.
1. HEAD content of page
2. Image Tags
3. Site Content

First, you need to know how Search Engine submissions work. Generally you go
to the Search Engine (ie. Excite) and add your site. Once you do that Excite
send a robot or spider (a little search program) to your web site to scour it
and see what it's all about. The robot or spider also travels through every
link on your site and scours those pages as well. Once it has collected all
its data, it reports back to Excite where the information gets indexed or
filed according to its content. Then the indexed web sites show up in a
particular order depending of the keyword(s) searched. Although every Search
Engine has its own method of determining the ranking of web sites, the
information below is bound to help you enormously in your fight to be at the
top.

In all three of these steps the most important thing to think about is
keywords. Keywords can be words or phrases. They are the words or phrases
that people will search for in order to find a site of your topic. So, in
this example we are using a pet store. Therefore some words or phrases people
would use to find a pet store would be "pet", "pet store", "pet shop", "pet
supplies", "pets". In addition, people might search for specific products or
brands. So, more keywords would be "IAMS", "Science Diet", and "catnip". Once
you have a good sense of the most important keywords for your web site,
you're ready to start changing some of the HTML code and content (text and
images that show up in your web site).

1. The HTML of your index page is especially important. There is a section
called the . This section is extremely important to spruce up before
submitting your site to a search engine. Before a client sees me for help,
his HTML typically looks like this:


Joe's Pet Supplies


But, when I'm finished with it, it might look something like this:


Pet supplies and pet toys. Joe's Pet Store.
pet supplies, pet shop, pet products, pets





This is just an example. There are rules about the length of any one of the
above tags. For example, the meta description tag should be less than 200
characters (characters include spaces). The title tag should be less than 50
characters. The meta keywords tag can be up to 1000 characters. So, in the
example above I would have added many more words and phrases for a real
client.

Once you've set up the HEAD section of your index page, it's time to tackle
the Image Tags in your document. All of your Images should be named and have
ALT tags as well. This is something that many web designers overlook. Keeping
your keywords (and phrases) in mind, check all of your images to make sure
that they have these 2 important elements. This simple step will help you
enormously with your search engine submissions. If you use an editor such as
Dreamweaver, you can just open your index page and click on an image. In the
Properties Inspector, you'll see the opportunity to give the image a name and
an ALT tag. Keywords, keywords, keywords. So, in our Pet Store example if the
image was the logo for the store, a good Image name would be
"pet_store_logo". A good ALT tag would be "pet store logo" or "Pet supplies,
pet toys, pet food, pet shop". The ALT tag only shows up in PC's when the
mouse hovers over the image, so as long as the ALT tag is relevant to the
picture you'll be fine. In Mac's the ALT tag will be seen before the picture
loads.

By including keyword rich Image Names and Alt tags throught your index page,
you will be giving the spiders and robots lots of content for indexing. So,
if you used to name the image of your logo "logo", I hope you know better now.

3. Site Content. Content is the "stuff" of your web site. It's all the words
and images that make up your web site. The most important thing to remember
about content is that keyword rich text will help you the most. What are the
words on your page? I don't mean the gif's that look like words, I mean
actual text. Read them very carefully. Are you using your keywords and
phrases or are you just rambling on about your store location and directions?
Especially on your index page (first page) you should have all of the most
important keywords and phrases. Repeating them is even better.Please don't
interpret that to mean that you would have the words "Welcome to my pet pet
pet pet store". That would be funny, but that's not what I mean. Instead,
here's a good example for the Pet Store:
"We welcome you and your pet to our pet supply store. Our pet shop has
been open for business for over 15 years in New Jersey. Now, all pets and all
pet owners can enjoy our great prices on every pet need from dog and cat
food, to chew toys, to dog grooming supplies. Our virtual pet shop is open 24
hrs a day 365 days a week. Enjoy savings on brands such as IAMS, and Science
Diet. What are you waiting for? Doesn't your lovable pet deserve a special
treat today?"
Notice which words are being used repeatedly.

Invest in a software program that can track your Search Engine Rankings for
you. Web Position Gold is reasonably priced $99 and will keep track of up
multiple web sites, with multiple keywords. It's an easy to use program that
will help you keep track of your progress. Or, if you're a Webmaster, it'll
help you in preparing reports for your clients.

Now that you know how to get your site listed on the first page of the Search
Engines, get started. Please, don't get impatient. It is going to initially
take you at least 6 weeks to get your web site listed with the major Search
Engines. You don't have to submit your web site to 1000 Search Engines. You
only need to submit your web site to the Top 6 or so including Yahoo, Excite,
Lycos, Alta Vista, Hot Bot and Web Crawler. Just between the top 2 (Yahoo and
Excite) you'll cover over 60% of all online searches. So, if you can be on
Page 1 in Excite for a few of your chosen keywords, your web site is being
exposed to hundreds of thousands of searchers per day!

If you find that after 2 months, you aren't showing up where you want to be,
then do a little research. Check which sites are ranking best for your
keywords, look at their HEAD section, their image tags, and their content.
You'll get some great ideas. Borrow them and resubmit to the Search Engine
you need to. Then, wait approx. 6 weeks for an update.

If you are diligent your site will soon have thousands of visitors per day
and per week, instead of the measely few stragglers that are finding it
today. Best of all it costs you nothing but a little time and effort.



About the Author
Linda Rocco. I am a web designer, online marketer and Owner of Web
Spinners Design Co. (www.webspinnersdesignco.com) and Gummy Lump wooden toys
(www.gummylump.com). I also teach Web Design and Online Marketing at a NYS
accredited school.