how to be found

[Nostradamus]

I don't know if this is the right forum, but if it's not then perhaps you can point me in the right direction?

I haven't done a homepage in 10 years. Back then, webcrawler and altavista where the engines that people generally used. If I remember made myself searchable/found by these engines by simple entering meta information in the beggining of my html-pages.

I recently setup a homepage using mysql, php as well as a single index.html which loads the rest.
How can I make myself found by todays search engines? Are there any new sofisticated methods? Do I have to contact google and give them something under the table to be presented at top?

Thanks in advance.

/Sören

 

[feherke]

Hi

Forget [tt]meta[/tt] tags. They was so abused, now search engines ignores them.
See forum828 ( Search Engine Optimization discussion ).

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[BabyJeffy]

Do I have to contact google and give them something under the table to be presented at top?

Actually... you can buy ad placement (not search listings) based on the keywords that the user searched on. Google have an advertising program for just this purpose. It's certainly not "under the table" - but it's probably not really what you are looking for, either.

Of course, check the SEO forum (forum828)... but the following simple pointers will get you entered into most indexes for free:
[ul][li]use a doctype (this link may help you choose one) on your page[/li]
[li]validate your page against your chosen doctype at

http://validator.w3.org

[/li]
[li]view your page in a text based browser (lynx springs to mind here) to see what your page looks like to a search engine[/li]
[li]write your page content clearly[/li]
[li]don't add irrelevant links or content to your page (no long 1px font-size lists of keywords or links to sites that just give lists of links to sites that give lists of links...)[/li]
[li]manually submit your page/site to the following top engines: google, aol, msn, yahoo, ask jeeves[/li]
[li]manually submit your page/site to the DMOZ open source directory[/li]
[li]update your page content on a regular basis[/li]
[li]ask relevant (like) sites to link to you (and link back to them if they are relevent to you)[/li][/ul]

That list, to my knowledge, contains no stale information and is full of all the best practice suggestions I have scraped from many sources recently. It's by no means complete... and it won't give you an instant ranking on any search engine... but if you follow the advice, your site will be searchable... and over time it will become more visible.

Cheers,
Jeff

[tt]Jeff's Page @ Code Couch

http://www.codecouch.com/jeff/

http://www.codecouch.com/jeff/blog/

[/tt]

What is Javascript? FAQ216-6094

 

[ChrisHirst]

just to update on Jeff's list,

forget manual submissions to the SEs, it will do no good at all. Just get some inbound links and the SEs will find you.
Note: AOL uses Google's database for their results.

Updating content, Yes if it needs it, but don't update for the sake of updating

Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Woo Hoo! the cobblers kids get new shoes.
People Counting Systems

So long, and thanks for all the fish.