Search Engine 2000 Checklist

Author: James T Kendall

Check your web site for search engine readiness with this quick overview about what to do and what not to do for effective listing in the search engines. This list in and off itself is not the true path to millions of hits, but it can help you towards the goal of appropriate, effective search engine listings.

- Keyword Phrases

Identify your most important keyword phrases and design your site around them. In our experience keyword phrases are much more attainable than individual keywords for a high search listing. In addition keyword phrases are more descriptive than single keywords so they produce more targeted traffic. For example ""Handmade Furniture"" is not only more descriptive than ""furniture"" but is also easier to get the top spot in search results.

- Title Tags

The title tag should be the first thing after the head statement and should say what you do, not who you are. In most search engines the title of your document carries a lot of weight, in many they are the most important part of your document. Think of it this way - how many times do you think ""Tamara's Terrific Teas"" is searched for? A lot less than ""organic tea"", so which should be in your title tag.

- Where to Be Listed

We believe that the most important place to be listed is in Yahoo! Pay very close attention to the instructions and write a description with zero hype if you are lucky, you might get listed. Next we suggest getting all your pages listed in the Inktomi database that handles the spill over search results for Yahoo! and also powers HotBot, Direct Hit, Canada, Anzwers, and others. Finally we suggest getting all pages listed in The Open Directory Project, AltaVista, Infoseek, Lycos, Excite, Northern Light in that order.

- Getting into Inktomi

We've noticed that it's easier to get listed in Inktomi if you submit your pages to Canada or Anzwers then if you try to add them to HotBot itself. If you get them into the Inktomi database they'll show up in HotBot searches in around 7 days.

- Keep Good Records

Where is your site listed/not listed? When is the last time you submitted to Yahoo? Where is the majority of your search engine traffic coming from? These are questions you really should know the answer to. Refer logs help here, if you don't have access to them get your hosting provider to set them up for you. If they won't - change providers, they're that important. - Check Out the Competition

Now, I'm not abdicating stealing another site's title, tags, etc. but you do need to check out the sites at the top of the search engines for your chosen keyword phrases. This can show you not only what they are doing right, but can also give you insight into how the search engine works. Make sure you check out the top 2 or 3, as examining only the first result can sometimes be misleading.

- Make a ""SiteMap"" Page

One very simple idea is to include a page on your web site that has links to every page on your site. This way you can submit this page to search engines with good spiders to get all of your pages listed without having to submit them all individually. As an added benefit some search engines like Excite seem to favor lists of html links with descriptive titles.

- Use those Alt Tags

At least half of the large search engines index Alt tags, if you are not effectively using them you're loosing ground to the competition. This does not mean keyword stuffing though - give it a little thought and come up with alt tags that are descriptive as well as effective. One new thing we've been fooling around with is alt tags not only for pictures but also for hyperlinks.

- Make use of Heading Tags

A few of the large search engines rank words inside of very highly. Our recommendation is to put your keyword phrase inside of a heading tag near the top of your page. With a little work you can usually work it out so that it is aesthetically pleasing and if not there is always cloaking.

About the author: James T Kendall gets TurboPromo's clients sites listed well in the search engines - http://www.turbopromo.com and develops sites for http://www.jtkconsulting.com