Search Engines

"Surveys have found that about 80% of all Internet users use one of the eight major search engines to find something they are looking for."

There are a lot of ways to market on the net. But step # 1, and the basis for practically every marketing program, starts with getting listed in the major search engines.

For a lot of sites, search engines may be the best traffic generator there is. Search engines permeate the net. If you don't get in to the major search engines you're automatically excluded from a number of other directories. Try this. Go to Search.com and do a search and you're actually using Infoseek. Try AOL NetFind and you're using Excite. Now try GoTo.com also Excite, LookSmart - Alta Vista.

Search engines use all sorts of technologies including items like keywords, weighting, proximity, and full text search. Don't drive yourself crazy trying to understand how each works -- just know that none work exactly the same and there is no silver bullet for making your site hop to the top of every list.
Don't underestimate the human factor in searches, if you know people refer to your content area by a particular name or description, use that in a meta tag and in the description of any directory submissions you make for your site. The more you think like your readers, the more likely potential readers are to find you.

How do you get a higher listing in the search engines? It's part Art, part Science. None of the search engines index pages and use meta tags in the same way.

Which page or pages is more relevant?
It's exactly the same with search engines. Although each search engine uses a different formula for determining relevancy, they will all use some or all of the following:
* Title
* Description
* First Paragraph
* Content
* Keyword Meta Tags
* Description Meta Tags
* Image Text (ALT text in IMG Tags)

You need to focus on as many of the above factors as possible, making sure you have effectively optimized each one.

Key Word Meta Tags. Make sure you maximize your key words. You can use up to 200 characters. And you can have some repetition of key words. (3 to 6 times) Think of what words your visitors might use to get to you. Would the Key Words be capitalized or lower case? Go through an exercise of listing as many options as possible.

It all flows from the Key Words. Create a Title for your page that uses some of your Key Words. Make sure your Description Meta Tag also uses some of the Key Words.
Next, add a Descriptive Paragraph to your page (put it as close to the top of the page as possible) that uses Key Words. Every image that you have on the page should have ALT text in the IMG tags.    Make sure that your page Content really has something to do with the Key Words. Use them wherever practical in your commentary.

It's just common sense.
Most changes are really quite simple to implement. And guess what? You will automatically move ahead of at least 50% of the sites in your category because time and time again we find that most sites are woefully ill-prepared in the basics.

Before you spend a lot of money or time on great marketing ideas, make sure your site is  submission ready for the major search engines.
The major search engines are free and they will produce traffic for you … if you pay attention to the basics!

If you want the best results from the search engines you should visit each one, one at a time, and submit by hand, if they have "categories" find the best category for your web site.

At the very least do the major ones by hand, these are the most important.