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Search Engine Registration

A lot of people ask us about registering their websites with search engines. In this training we will cover some of the most basic aspects of search engine registration. We will also discuss optimizing your site to improve search engine ranking. Now who wouldn't want to do that!

First Things First

A lot of our customers make the mistake of asking us to optimize their site for search engines only after someone else has already designed the site. This makes it much more difficult to make the site very optimal without redesigning and rewording the content of the pages. The reasons for this will become obvious shortly. So to start out you should remember that to have the best possibility of ranking well you need to start from the beginning of your design with search engines in mind.

Search engines use "spiders" or "robots" to review your site by scanning the code behind your pages looking for relavency in your site. One way they do this is by checking for the repitition of words used on the page. In the old days, unscrupuluos designers would use many creative methods to hide words over and over in the page, that were not visible in the browser, in order to improve their ranking. However, the search engine gurus caught on to these sneaky tricks and began to program their spiders and robots to recognize them. Today this is considered a form of spam and will usually get you banned from even being listed at all. So let's look at some of the "legal" methods to improve your chances with the search engines.

<meta> Tags

<meta> tags are special tags that web developers can include in web pages that include extra information about the particular page. Spiders and robots can use this information to help understand the relavency of the content of the page. This is where you would want to include additional wording that pertains to the content of your page. It is very important, and to your benefit, to include wording in these tags that use some of the key words found in your page content. Two of the most important <meta> tags to use are the keywords, and description tags. These are pretty self explainatory as to there use. Examples of these two very important tags, which I have extracted from this very page, are as follows:

<meta name="keywords" content="web design trainings, web designers, web developers, web sites, web pages, web developments, Web Studios, web studio zone, webstudiozone, webstudio.com, webstudiozone.com, html, javascripts, CSS, dhtml, christian web designs, web technology, web technologies, webzones, web zones, webmasters, graphics, graphic designs, web, designs, web publishing, web documents, internet, internet development">

<meta name="description" content="Web design training at Web Studio Zone - Professional Web Design Solutions and trainings, web development, web designs, graphic designs and web publishing made easy.">

One thing to keep in mind. You do still have to be careful not to repeat the same words too many times in these <meta> tags. Although the use of these <meta> tags is "legal" it is still considered spam if you go overboard. For more information about determining how to set up these tags, and just about anything else you may need to know about search engines, I recommend checking out searchenginewatch.com.

Titles, Headers and Content

What is key to understanding how to help increase to relavency of your site and thus improve your ranking in the search engines is that the spiders and robots are able to recognize what exactly your site is about. You must use a unified approach when planning your site. It is vitally important that the content of the above named <meta> tags, your headers, title and your page content all tie together by using the same or similar words. This makes sense to the spiders and robots helping them to figure out what your site is about.

How To Register Your Website

I could spend a week just wading through the details of the differences between the various paid listing options. Sometimes you are simply paying to be listed more quickly than usual. Usually within a few days. Otherwise, submissions may take several weeks before you are listed. At other times you are paying for a service that will help to generate traffic to your site. Be sure to read carefully what you are getting for your hard earned cash so you know that you are getting what you need.

By all means be sure to submit your site to Google. They have so entirely dominated the search engine market that it is common to hear someone say "Google it" as if Google is a verb and most of us always begin our searches by using Google.

 

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