Getting the search engines to put me on their lists??

[IrelandsAngelEyes]

Hi everyone!

I have kind of a "two-fold" question here. I've gone in and set my "meta-tags" and all of that information, but yet it still won't bring my website up in any search engines when I type in anything even CLOSE or EXACT to what is in all of my information?? What do I need to do to make sure that this is all done correctly? I've filled in all the information for each page (well just the index page for now) - watched the tutorial - but can't figure out how to get this to work?? I want to make sure that as I'm finishing up my website this weekend (www.clooneydesigns4u.com) - that when someone goes to GOOGLE, or ALTA-VISTA, or any of the search engines, and are looking for ANYTHING that we do here - that it shows our website as one of the ones they can look into??

Second question - I need to change how our payments are taken out. My husband and I want to make it so that BV takes pmts out of our "joint bank" instead of MY federal credit union - but not sure how to switch this. We'd also like to switch from monthly, to something where they can take out like 6 months worth - so we don't have to worry about the "monthly charge" ---??

Any suggestions?

The other thing I'm a bit confused on, is that we use our YAHOO account as our business email, how do I set up a link, so that when people click on the "CONTACT US" (a new button I'll create), they automatically get directed to an email, it can also be an email set up with BV, I don't care - but as long as they have a WAY to contact us, instead of having to stop what they are doing, write it down, then go to THEIR email and send it out to our YAHOO account.

Thanks so much, I'll check this in just a few minutes.

Katie

[limebrook1]

Re: Getting the search engines to put me on their lists??

Search Engines are a very wierd science. I was told it sometimes takes 6 to 7 months for search engines to find you, and this must be true as my site visitors doubled in the seventh month, and more and more people are coming through via search engines now. So message 1, this is a long haul, not a short sprint.

Vodahost will do a one off submission of your site to search engines - you need to ask them to do this.

You need to make sure the pages of your site are optimized for search engines to find. Some search engines use your key word meta data tags, others use only your content. You need good content on your pages, with your key words repeated throughout your text and also in your alternate tags on any pictures and photographs. Key words should appear in your page title as well as the content.

You can use a search engine optimisation programme - I use Submit-It from MSN which is relatively cheap and submits up to 10 separate pages to search engines for you (it will do more but at extra cost, and really you only need key pages submitted). It will also analyse each page (whether you are going to submit them or not!) and tell you where it is not optimised. On my site I have about 70 pages, and MSN tells me only about 20 are fully optimised! I am slowly working through them but it takes time. After all, there is an art to repeating your key words sufficient times in the text without making it appear senseless to the reader. Must admit I find this really boring, and prefer creating new content, but it is a necessary evil!

MSN is also quite fun giving you a weekly score for the top ten search phrases that you think people will use to search for your site. Mine keeps climbing, although very slowly, as I optimise more pages and get cleverer with adding content! I now have a 'very good' score which I am pleased with.

I know I was very suprised when my site was not picked up immediately, but now understand it better. It is not easy, and needs work.

Hope this is helpful

Trish

[navaldesign]

Re: Getting the search engines to put me on their lists??

As to the last part of your post, just create a button (independent or part of your menubar) and give it the link: mailto:youremailaddress@yourdomain.com selecting also Link Type: mailto

When they click on that button Their email client (Outlook Express or other) will popup with your email address already in the To: field.

[IrelandsAngelEyes]

Re: Getting the search engines to put me on their lists??

Ok, thanks for the advice. I know that there is something I need to do with the meta-tags and all, and wonder if I have to do that for all pages etc., and if it is done - how is it that BV does this for us, and how do we make sure it's done? Does that make sense? In summary, what do I HAVE to complete on my end, to make sure that BV has done the submitting of all of this ....?

[navaldesign]

Re: Getting the search engines to put me on their lists??

Ok, thanks for the advice. I know that there is something I need to do with the meta-tags and all, and wonder if I have to do that for all pages etc., and if it is done - how is it that BV does this for us, and how do we make sure it's done? Does that make sense? In summary, what do I HAVE to complete on my end, to make sure that BV has done the submitting of all of this ....?

When you put the keywords, the page name (it is different from the name you save the page, f.e. for my index page, the name is : Navaldesign Homepage) and the description of the page in Page Properties, BV includes these meta tags in the page code. To see this, just click on Page HTML, and a notepad file will open with your html code. If you look there you will see all this in the head section.

It would be of great help if the basic keywords you use could be included in the page name and description. However, SE indexing is quite difficult. You have to compete with thousands of others that have the same target as you, and "site age" is very important. Keyword selection is also of vital importance. If you look at Google for "navaldesign" i'm in the first page, if you look for "naval design" i don't even figure. The same goes for the rest of my keywords. Anyway, three weeks after i submitted my sitemap to Google, i now find Google trawling my site every two days, with increasing number of hits, and i also saw from my webstats that whilst in the beggining the only keywords associated with my site was "navaldesign" and "it", now i have some twelve keywords associated to my site by SE

[RPW]

Re: Getting the search engines to put me on their lists??

Also look at vodahits which is another vodahost service for submission to search engines at a low cost. If nothing else it saves you the hassle ! Any feedback from anyone who has used it ?