Search engines

Will you want your web to be seen by search engines? Probably, the answer is yes. Search Engines are complex beasts and a little knowledge is a good thing. Webposition has a ruck of up-to-date information on the top ten.

Prepare well

Its best to have your web fairly-well finished before submission. This way when you submit, the engine can sort through realistic data. The search engine will enter your site and grab common text, working its way through the links and directories. It'll then compile a list of what it thinks your site is about, then bugger off somewhere else. It may come back and check for new / redundant stuff, or you may add things and request it come back again.

Yahoo

Yahoo works a little differently to this. When you submit to Yahoo, your site is put into one or more categories. Once you are in there its hard to get it changed, hence, only submit to Yahoo when your content is stable.

Content

The most important parts of your page are hidden.. the page title and description. These you'll find you can change in Dreamweaver by viewing the head content. After this, the content of your pages, title of pictures and all sorts of things are noted. Finally there are keywords in the head content that can fill-in any gaps. Webposition is one of the best for telling you how to get the best results. Get a free trial from their site.. it works for 3 engines and will help A LOT.

Key words / phrases

The major thing Webposition will say is, bear in mind 2 - 4 key phrases that people will type in their browser to find you. Rack your brains here, the better the phrases, the more traffic you'll get. Hit on a phrase that no-one else uses but that people searching use and you'll be number one every time. Once you have the phrases you build them into your site and set the engines-up to find them. Think of a phrase... then write it down.

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