META TAGS 1.01
NOW HEAR THIS!
1. Many search engines prostitute themselves by selling key words or high positions in search engines to advertisers. Amazon really does not have a book on every subject you search for.
2. Any given search engine may only list a maximum of 15 or 20% of all the sites on the web.
3. You need to promote your site to the top 15 to 20 search engines in an ongoing program.
4. You can safely ignore all the other search engines, they are virtually meaningless.
5. Free For All sites will only get you on every spam list going.
6. Banner Exchanges are virtually useless.

If you build a web site and no one sees it, is it really there?

It takes time, work and a modest amount of know how to attract viewers to your site. It is fairly easy to acquire the know how. What so many people are not prepared to invest is the effort and the time it takes to introduce, grow and promote their web sites. It isn't difficult to do, it just takes dedication and effort. The single most effective thing you can do to promote your web site is to obtain a good position in the search engine listings. That is what gets the hits, the visitors and the return visitors.

It takes several hours a month updating a web site, preparing and posting new material and most important, promoting it in newsgroups, via email, and listing and re-listing it with search engines. If you are not prepared to do this you may as well not start a web site in the first place. Your site will just lie there. A neglected site suggests a neglected business.

If you want to attract the hits, get good qualified potential customers to your site and get a good return on your Internet investment, here, setting aside the issues of content on your site, are some of the first steps required.

LIST YOUR SITE WITH THE MAJOR SEARCH ENGINES

First of all know that there are basically two types of search engines.

SEARCH ENGINES: These use "spiders" to index web sites. You simply submit your page to their search engine and the "spider" drops by later and indexes your entire site. You can sit back and hope that these spiders will find your site by accident, but it is far faster and more likely if you go to them and tell fill out their "submit" page. Examples are AltaVista, Excite, HotBot, Lycos, Infoseek, and WebCrawler.

DIRECTORIES: These depend completely on your submissions as the Web site owner to produce their indexes. Generally these directories will only list the home page of your site. Examples are Yahoo!, Linkstar, and WWW Yellow Pages.

YAHOO INSTANT LISTING - NEW: Kirwood now has a new method of getting a site listed on Yahoo within a week, often just in 2 or 3 days.

Yahoo is probably the most important listing of all, though it's technically a directory, rather than a search engine. It uses real humans to review your submission and sometimes even your site. Here are the rules for submitting to Yahoo. So take the time, read and follow their instructions.

For our purposes both types will be referred to from here on as search engines.

Why do you want to get listed in the top ten or on the first page of a search? Simple. Most people will not bother to go to the subsequent pages. If you are on page 2, 3 or worse, you may as well not be there at all. Very few people will visit your site.

You cannot just create your web site, place it on the Internet and sit back. Nothing will happen. Ever. Not even your mother will find it without help. You have to tell the world that your site is there. That's where search engines come in . . . and search engines use your META TAGS to create your listings.

Meta Tags are the key to your position in all search engine rankings.

DO NOT SUBMIT YOUR SITE YET

Search engines create the indexes and the directories which the world uses to find the information or services they want on the interned. For anyone to find your site, it must be favourably listed near the top of the results pages on the major search engines before anything else. META TAGS are also what the search engines look for when they create your listings. Poor or missing Meta Tags will mean lousy placement or no listings. That will mean fewer visitors to your web site and lost sales.

To help achieve a high ranking, you should create META TAGS for each page on your site. Meta tags contain all the important information you will be submitting when you request that your site be listed by the various search engines.

META TAGS are vitally important in securing a good position in those listings.

All search engines rely on Meta Tags to help them create their directory listings and indexes. Meta tags are what most of the search engines use in determining how your site is listed and more importantly, how it shows up in searches. They are the source of the little blurbs you see in the results of a search and these tell viewers what they can expect to see if they make the effort to click over to your site.

Each page on your web site can have its own set of Meta Tags with differing contents. This is recommended. However for now, let's just concentrate on your home or index page. Once you have set up Meta Tags for your home page, you can easily adapt them for each of the other pages on your site.

Let's Start with "KEYWORDS"

What Keywords Should You Use? Here is a service which supposedly tracks the most popular keywords people use when searching. It may be very informative. Give it a try,,,,

Keywords are the words people use in searching for a site like yours. You use them every time you enter something in the "search" box of a search engine. Creating an effective keyword list is one of the single most important things you can do to attract potential customers to your web site. Keep in mind that your really don't care very much about just attracting tons of visitors if they never will buy your products. You want potential customers and that is what you should concentrate on first and foremost.

The most important thing you must do in creating your keyword list is determine what words or phrases your customers will be using in searching for a service or business like yours. Clients searching for legal services are probably going to search for "lawyers." People planning an exotic vacation might search for "Cruises" or more specifically,"Caribbean Cruises." People looking for work, or to change jobs, would search for "jobs" or "employment."

Those words, "lawyers," "Cruises," "Jobs" and the others should be in the keywords Meta Tag for those sites. This will help ensure that the sites show up in the page of search results returned by the enquiry.

Notice earlier I did not say that you want to get listed in the top ten of all listings. As in all advertising, and the web is essentially one big ad, you only care about qualified, potential customers seeing your ad. There is no sense in putting a cosmetics or fashion ad in say a "Popular Mechanics" magazine.

Similarly, on the web, you really only care about attracting your actual, prospective customers. If you sell lipstick, you want to attract lipstick users and potential users. No one else matters. If you specialize in Exotic Sailing vacations in the Virgin Islands, you want to attract sailors. Your site and Meta Tags should concentrate on attracting your target audience and the rest be damned.

HERE'S HOW TO CREATE YOUR KEYWORD META TAG

Now, go on-line and start searching for sites using your own draft keywords. See what you get. If you are getting sites competitive to or similar to yours, congratulations. You hit the magic list first time. That is highly unlikely. However you should get lots of ideas from what you see.

Next, using your web browser, click on the "view source" button to see the keywords these sites are using. Look at the top of their home page HTML source "code" under the Meta Keywords section. You will see what these sites are using for keywords. Do they make sense? Do they fit your business? If they do, use them too. You will get lots more ideas here. Copy all you want. No one can copyright simple nouns. Add these to and refine your rough list.

Finally, do a search for your competition. See what keywords they are using. Are any applicable to your site? No, this is not plagiarizing, it is market research. You learn from your competition. That is just smart business.

You should have the start for a pretty good keyword list here. Now you need to select the ones you think are most important and rank them all in a rough descending order of importance. The first words in your list are the ones most likely to be used by people when they enter words in the search engine search box.

Now, make up your keyword list. The first ten or so words are the most important. Use your best words first. Separate each word with a comma. You can put a space between the comma and the next word in your list if you prefer. It is optional. Use the singular forms of most terms. A search for "lawyers" for example would automatically include "lawyer," however the opposite is not always true. You could use simple combinations like "divorce lawyers" or Caribbean Cruises" if you wish.

You can repeat keywords, but do so sparingly and no more then about three times. However, keywords used in phrases or combinations may be repeated more often. For example , "lawyers, divorce lawyers, civil lawyers, criminal lawyers, defence lawyers, real estate lawyers" are an example of how to effectively repeat keywords.

If your business has a term or keyword which is often misspelled, put in the misspelled version as well as the correct version.

Misleading people to get them to your web site is suicidal. Do not use words like "sex" or "nude babes" just to attract attention. It will backfire every time. Be straight forward, be honest and be direct. Some companies are listing the names of their competitors in their Meta Tags. I suggest that this is dishonest and unethical. I would not knowingly deal with a firm using such shabby tricks.

Now, take your keyword list, each separated by a comma and place the list as shown here:

<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="put your own keyword list here between these quotations marks">

Keywords can vary from page to page on your site as you see fit.

PAGE TITLE

Your titles should reflect the overall content of your site. They should give a good description of what people will find on your individual page. The title should provoke people into wanting to learn more.

Avoid meaningless marketing hype. Claims like "we are number one" are a waste of space and time. High pressure advertising hype will only annoy your prospects. If you have something free with which to entice people, put it in your title. A title for this page might be "Attracting web site visitors. Getting top search engine rankings Free." Free is still the number one word in advertising. Use it, but mean it.

OK now take your TITLE and place it between the <TITLE></TITLE> tags as shown here.

<TITLE>put your page title here</TITLE>

Now, for the third META TAG "CONTENT"

This is where you make your first impression on potential customers, so give them a good solid reason to come to your web page. Look at your competition and see what they are doing. Learn from what you think works and what doesn't work. Then write your own CONTENT description. There probably is no need to repeat your keywords. You can also exceed the 250 character description for your own page, but most search engines will chop off your CONTENT around the 200 0r 250 character mark. So with that in mind, by all means put your most powerful selling points first.

Put your CONTENT tag between the tags as shown here:

<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="put your descriptive copy here between the quotation marks">

You're almost done.

Now take each of your three tags and place them at the top of your web site page, right after the <HTML><HEAD> and before the </HEAD> tag.

Your HTML code will look something like this:

<HTML><HEAD>
&LT;title put your page title here&LT;/TITLE&GT;
<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="put your own keyword list here between these quotations marks">
<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="put your descriptive copy here between the quotation marks">
</HEAD>

Now that you have read through this material and created your beautifully hand crafted Meta Tags, go to town. Go on line and start submitting your web site. (Or have us professionally submit your web site for you. We can get you listed in the first few pages of the major search engines.)

When the submission pages ask you for your site description, use your DESCRIPTION tag. When they ask for keywords, cut and paste your KEYWORD tag.

Submit as often as you like and to as many engines as you wish. You can be confident that you are going about it in the best possible way.

Getting listed in Web Search Engines is an ongoing process.It takes several weeks for your initial submissions to show up in the results. You must then fight to first get your site listed in the first three pages of any search results. You must fight to maintain that position and fight to improve it.

If you want to do this for yourself, you should use these Free Search Engine Submission Services

Kirwood Search Engine Submission Services If you are not prepared to do this for yourself, we can get you better position in the major search engine results. We are expert at the process and have the tools and knowledge to do the job.
We can also offer you a thorough analysis of your current standing in the major search engines which will report on the items contained in our Kirwood's Web Site Position Analysis reporting service

The report details where your site stands now, where your competition stands and suggest ways to improve your site's ranking.

Web Design and Promotion takes time and effort to make a site work. It is just not enough to post a pretty brochure. You must offer viewers a reason to visit, a reason to stay and a reason to come back. That takes thought, planning and frequent updating of your site.