They send out robots looking for you.
Don't hide in a dark corner -
here's how to talk to them and make sure they understand what
your
site is about.
There is no silver bullet to get a page to appear at the top of
each search engine results.
We can't guarantee you a number one listing (don't be
fooled by those who say they can) but we sure can keep you well
away from the bottom slot.
In general, any page competes with several hundred or thousands of
others for the same audience.
Not everyone can be #1 in a search listing (this self-evident fact
appears to escape many people).
When you have 10,000 pages on a subject -
someone is going to be number 10,000.
However, there are several things you can do to improve your placement.
According to
How Search Engines Rank Web Pages,
"Search engines will also check to see if the keywords appear near the
top of a web page, such as in the headline or in the first few
paragraphs of text. They assume that any page relevant to the topic will
mention those words right from the beginning.
Frequency is the other major factor in how search engines determine
relevancy. A search engine will analyze how often keywords appear in
relation to other words in a web page. Those with a higher frequency are
often deemed more relevant that other web pages."
Let your home page start with a paragraph or two explaining what it's
about, using as much as possible the keywords that you expect people
to use when looking for a site such as yours.
You should have those keywords in a META tag
(but note tha not all search engines will use that),
and in the ALT attributes of all graphic images that aren't purely
cosmetic (e.g. bullets).
Search engines can't read graphics,
so use the ALT attribute in the IMG tags to repeat the button
labels as text, which the engines will index too. For example,
<IMG BORDER = "0"
SRC = "contbar.jpg"
ALT = "Weed and Algae Control"
>
You may also get a little boost from having your own domain name, e.g.
"aquatic-systems.com". This gives your site more credibility than user
pages on an ISP, and some engines might take that into account.
Some also boost you for how many sites link to you, since that also
indicates a respected, credible site. You can exchange links with
related sites.
You can type "link:yourURL" (substitute your URL for yourURL)
into AltaVista to find out how many, and which, sites link to yours.
Here are some general tips that help a page appear more relevant:
