This brief tutorial covers the following questions.   There is a lot to being listed successfully in search engines, and this is just some basic info.  There are links at the bottom for sites that will cover the topic in depth.

• Why does it matter whether my site is listed in the search engines?
• How do I submit my site?
• What are Meta Tags?
• Why isn't my site in the search engine even though I submitted it?
• What can I do to improve my ranking?
• Where can I learn more about search engines?
  
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Why does it matter whether my site is listed in the search engines?

Depending on your website, and how well you have listed with the search engines, you could be getting a tremendous amount of traffic to your site. The typical website gets about 15-20% of traffic from a search engine, but some sites might receive up to 90% of all traffic from searches.  Recent stats report that only 16% of websites are even indexed on search engines! Those who aren't are missing a lot of potential customers. 

Consider how you market your company and your website- offline.   Do you  have your URL (web address) listed on all stationary including business cards?  Do you have your URL listed on all print ads including the telephone book? Is your market local or worldwide?   What other kinds of advertising do you do to promote your company or your website?   Even if all these types of promotion are successful, your customer may not remember your URL and resort to a search engine to find your website.

How do I submit my site?

This is actually the simplest part of the whole thing.   Simply visit the search engine you wish to be listed with and look for a link that might say "suggest a site", or "Add a URL".   To make search engine submission even easier, we have added a special page to our site that contains links to the major search engines and directories as well as links to their respective submission information pages.   Several of them simply require you to list your URL and email address.  Others may require extensive information including descriptions.  Our Search Engine Submissions Pages are located at: Search Engine Listing   This is ideal for one at a time submissions or to select just one search engine that you may have been dropped from.

What are meta-tags?

Meta tags are small html codes that are inserted in the head of an html page.  They are not displayed on the visible portion of the website that your audience views, however they ARE viewed by some of the spiders (search engine robots) that view your site.   Because some of the major search engines DO use these, it is always valuable to make sure you have them included on at least your main page.   If you have other important pages on your site, you might wish to submit those separately and even customize the meta tags on those pages accordingly.   The two important meta tags as far as search engines are concerned are the 'description' and the 'keywords' tags.   

If you would like to see an example of meta tags, just open any popular website (maybe try a competitors!) and using your web browser view the source code.  The tags are always near the top of the page.  (Click on View, then Page source (in Netscape), or Source (in I.E.))   Whatever you do, even if you are tempted to, do not copy someone else's meta tags verbatim.   One big no-no is to use a competitors company name or trademark in your meta tags.  Some engines limit the number of keywords, so be sure to list them in order of importance or relevance to your site.   Stats say only 34% of websites even use meta-tags.   Make sure your site does, so you have an edge over those other 66%! 

Why isn't my site in the search engine even though I submitted it?

One reason may be that it has not been 'crawled' by the search engines yet. Crawling is when the search engine goes through your site, indexing the pages for keywords and content.   Some search engines take several weeks to get around to your site.   If you submitted and still are not showing in the search engines after 2 months, you should resubmit.  Another reason is that search engines may apparently drop your site (for no apparent reason).  Perhaps this is due to their desire to post 'fresh' sites.  If you have not updated your site recently, you might consider doing so, and resubmitting to the search engines again.   One other area where people get frustrated is directory listings such as Yahoo.   Yahoo is notorious for being extremely picky about who is posted.  Because the sites that are listed are all viewed by live humans, they do not automatically add your site no matter how great you think it is!   All you can do is try to submit once every few months and hope they will like your site.  Note: They do have a paid service to review your site sooner, but even after paying them, you may still not be selected to be listed!   (no wonder there are so many frustrated webmasters out there!) 

What can I do to improve my ranking?

There are many simple things you can do to improve your ranking.  First of all, realize that there are millions of other sites competing with you and not everyone can achieve a top 10 listing.   I have already discussed meta tags, which are important.   However, some other important areas are often overlooked.   One is the Title.  By the title, I do not mean you have on your website at the top, I mean the text that falls between the <title></title> tags.    This is the title that shows up on the very top of your web browser.   It is also the description that is listed when someone bookmarks your website.   You should make this very descriptive and include not only your company name but a short description also.  For example, our title is:  "The Net Now - Site Design, Hosting - Affordable Internet Services in London, Ontario"  Search engines all seem to give a lot of weight to the title of the site.  In addition to the title and meta tags, you should take care to use as many relevant keywords within the main body of your text on your site.   Do not 'overuse' a keyword as this could cause your site to be overlooked entirely, however, DO make sure to include as much relevant description as you can.   Another area you can include keywords is in the ALT tags on your graphics.   Don't make the mistake of only having graphics on your site and no text.   However, if a lot of your main page is graphics, make sure to include descriptive alt tags for all graphics.

Where can I learn more about search engines?

All of the information I've included here is just off the top of my head from what I have learned from experience and from reading all I can about how search engines work.   There are some very good sites I will share with you that have a LOT more information than I have offered here.  There may be other important points that I have overlooked also.   In addition,  you might find out a lot of 'secrets', or 'cheats' to making the search engines list you higher---beware, they are getting much smarter and are penalizing sites for using underhanded methods such as invisible text etc.  You've been warned!

Here are some sites that you might find helpful.  Note:  The Net Now does not necessarily endorse all of the services or suggestions at these sites, use them with caution and please feel free to ask us if you have any questions.

Search Engine Watch:    http://searchenginewatch.com/   

Search Engine Submission Pages  http://thenetnow.com/web/searchengine.htm

Lycos Search Engine Marketing Guide  http://insite.lycos.com/tutorial.asp

Good luck to everyone with your website promotion!