Help with Website - getting onto search engine listings & SEO

[BUSA]

I need you help. I want to know how to make a site available in search engines. Supposing i search about xyz and i have xyz on my site then how can i get it displayed in google and other search engines. Thanks in advance.

[vivekiny2k]

Originally Posted by BUSA

I need you help. I want to know how to make a site available in search engines. Supposing i search about xyz and i have xyz on my site then how can i get it displayed in google and other search engines. Thanks in advance.

google and others use crawlers, but i believe there is away to proactively tell them you have updated and they can update their data. under business section also they have free update option AFAIK.

EDIT: this will give you a start Add your URL to Google

[BUSA]

Thanks alot Vivek, ill try it and see the results.

[nitroxx]

You need an SEO Search engine optimizer hes a specialist who spends his time linking terms from your website to the internet search engines

[ravibhat]

SEO (mostly freelancers) does this work, They add few key words effectively in your website based on the theme of your site search engines like google cache your website content (keywords in meta tags etc..) and save in their database sort of thing. when someone search for simialr keywords in google or any search engine they show your website reference too.

however getting better ranks in search results you need to either register with search engine by paying fees or submit your url in popular search engines etc..

SEO is like daily basis work based on what key words visitors search for.

There are many rules you need to follow in your website so that search engines read your pages.

For the websites i develop we have done this SEO in the past and found good result however I personally SEO is tricky job.

Regards,

Ravi.

[hydrashok]

BUSA, all it takes is a little time and a bit of content optimization.

I've never used the services of a SEO service, but my (official) website comes on top (no.1 hit) with just 2 of the keywords most relevant to the website. And out of those keywords, one keyword is a very very generic word. It took me only 3-4 months from the launch of the website (back in 2000) to get it on top of search results (when the relevant keywords are given) and on the top it has remained since.

From experience, the basic things to be taken care of:

1) Use the most important keywords (KWs) in the "title" tag. Use these KWs in a proper sentence, and not as a string of KWs.

2) Use 10 of the most important and relevant KWs in the "keywords" metatag.

3) Give a good, short description in the "Description" tag. This description should contain at least 2-3 of the most relevant KWs used in a proper sentence.

4) NEVER use KWs in the Title, Description or Keywords tag that are not relevant to your website. Keep it honest and it really works wonders.

5) Use the H1 and H2 tags (most people don't now). Keep the content in the H1 and H2 tags relevant.

6) If the main content of your page is in tables, adjust the design so that quite a bit (I can't really quanititize this) comes high up in the nesting level of tables. The farther down it gets nested in the code, the lesser of it the spiders will see, and the lesser "relevance" they will give to that page.

7) Use 2-3 of the most relevant keywords as many times as possible in the first 2-3 paragraphs of the content. Again this is mostly a thumb rule. I can't put my finger on why and how much, but believe me, it works.

8) Don't try to fool the SE by using keywords here and there on the page with the same colour as the page background (making the KWs invisible). Sooner or later, you WILL be penalized in the rankings. Like I mentioned before, keep the content honest and relevant, without going on a tangent, or into irrelevant stuff just to get SE listings.

9) Get into the DMOZ directory. It helps a lot.

10) Get as many sites to link to you as possible. The more the better. (I haven't spent much time on this, but I did get quite a few external links without taking any effort).

11) Understand that it takes a little time. But if you get on top or in the first page of results the "natural" way, you'll stay there for a long time, as long as you keep the content relevant to the subject of the website.

PS: Though most people know what website I'm talking about, I hope you'll forgive me for not mentioning the link here, for reasons of my own.

[mobike008]

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the only way to ensure your URL comes up when people type for a particular keyword. If its important hire the services of a SEO expert who will do the groundwork for you. Create the keywords, submission to all search engines and installing the keywords on your homepage etc.

SEO requires constant monitoring and ask the guy who you hire to give you results in at least 1-3 pages of google search results. Anything beyond that is as good as wasted.

you can also try driving people to your websites by running Google Adword campaigns, thats another long story altogether

[BaCkSeAtDrIVeR]

IMHO, search engine optimisation is a whole lot of b*l*s*i*.. You need to write good code - html (or any variant). Do NOT worry if the page is called something like http://some.url/somefile.php. In other words, the file extension is irrelevant - the file itself has to be html compliant. Read the various standards on w3c.org for more information on web page standards and compliance as well as for info on software which validates and gives you feed back about your pages for standards compliance.

Next step is to have proper and relevant "meta" tags in the headers. Read the following link to find info about information on html document structure and in particular, meta tags. The global structure of an HTML document.

In my experience, all google requires is time to find about your site; once your site is found, the lag between updating the search results and your update on the page is only a few minutes. Of course, your mileage may vary, (or YMMV).

Of course, do not expect to get a high ranking if your page is not really relevant to the keywords. For example, there is no way your page on, let us say, "US inability to detect weapons of mass destruction" is going to beat the ranking of this page - Cannot find Weapons of Mass Destruction

[abhijitaparadh]

I heard there are some special companies/consultants who do the tuning of your website so that it will appear very high up in Google search results (for related keywords).

Any idea/pointers to companies who do similar thing?

Any idea about the technique they use is legal/ethical?

[Sam Kapasi]

It's called search-engine optimization. Not website tuning. And it is perfectly legal.

[mobike008]

Originally Posted by abhijitaparadh

I heard there are some special companies/consultants who do the tuning of your website so that it will appear very high up in Google search results (for related keywords).

Any idea/pointers to companies who do similar thing?

Any idea about the technique they use is legal/ethical?

As Sam said,its called SEO and is a method of using the right set of key words that are embedded into your website's homepage so if someone types those keywords in google, your website URL will rank higher on the search results.

Well, this alone is not a solution to bring it up on the search ranks. Because google is clever ( and, why not, it's in that business) and will throw the results higher ( as most people only look at page1, or 2) only for websites that are using their adwords programme.

So, find a company ( they are dime a dozen) who will help you with a package for 1 year for 10K or lower. Because, it is a lot of manual and hard work for SEO service providing company to bring up to good ranks, it can easily take 3-6 months using only SEO to get good results.

I recommend a 2-prong strategy, along with SEO also use the Adwords programme and run a few campaigns and see the click through ratio (CTR) hit the ceiling

Note: Do search on Google for SEO & Adwords, funny as it may sound for more info

[abhijitaparadh]

Thanks a lot everyone!
Do you know any such company/SEO who does this work for a reasonable price? Any pointers (website/email/phone) will be greatly appreciated.

[BaCkSeAtDrIVeR]

@abhijit, I strongly suggest you do not go for them. Please read my (and some other) posts above - you need to have really honest about content and tags. Read up about the META tag in w3c's html standards - google for them.

One of the methods search engines use to index a page is to count the number of links pointing to a particular page. SEO companies sometimes resort to spamming the web with fake links to your page, (like posting the links in some bulletin board, guest pages, etc). SUch tactics can backfire and result in your page being blacklisted.

I have found that my personal page is indexed within a couple of days of updating, cos I keep them simple, clean, and neat. And standards compliant.

You keep the job simple for the search engines, and they will do wonders for you. It is as simple as that.