Make a Site Visible on the Web in 7 Steps

To promote a site and to obtain that all the pages are indexed by search engines, this handbook is essential. Because even if a site has complete and interesting contents, it will be invisible on the Web, without an action of indexing on directories, search engines and other sites likely to bring backlinks. SEO can also require a modification of the presentation or the addition of accessories in the page.
Note that abusing methods for artificially improving the position of a site can lead you in the "sandbox".

  1. Preparing the pages
  2. Adding meta tags
  3. Directories
  4. Search engines
  5. Sitemap
  6. RSS
  7. Publicize
  8. Documents

1) Preparing the pages

Contents

- The pages must contain some text and a maximum of details to describe the contents. The first lines of the text have more importance for the indexing and can be used to make a description for the results of search engines (max. 250 characters).
- The repetition of significant terms improves the indexing.
- Try to move the non significant elements at the end of the page, if possible.

Presentation

- The title of the page, between the <title> </title> tags, should not be omitted and it must be 80 characters long and significant.
- Titles in the body (H1, H2, etc.) and highlighting by the strong attribute, also gives more weight to the words for search engines.
If the page does not comprise a title, the contents of the first H1 tag are used to replace it in results of search engines.
- About the frames, forget them, they will not be even supported in the next HTML 5 standard.

Keywords

- Keywords must be placed preferably at the beginning of the text and:
- In the titles.
- In the filenames.
- In the description of internal links and the "title" attribute.
The name of pages (HTML file) is taken into account as well as the anchors.
To know if a keyword is of value, test it here.

External and internal links

- The URL, and other references are taken into account, they must contain keywords. For example use <a href = "#Referencing " >, rather than <a href= "#1234" >
- The words in a filename must be separated by "-" and not by underscore "_" (but that will change in the near future, for Google at least).
- The <a> tags containing a link on other pages of the same site has to include a title= attribute because its contents is taken into account.

Avoid

- Avoid hidden texts to artificially fill the page with keyword, that will function one moment, then your site will be dropped in the "sandbox", or the blacklist, in other words it will be excluded from results of search engines, it would then be necessary to change domain name to be indexed again.
- Avoid duplicate content, identical pages on several sites or several directories.
- A directory is a site which contains only links on other sites. The inscription to a multitude of directories to improve the ranking can create a sudden increase in the number of links towards the site but this has no future. However major directories such as dmoz.org have on the contrary a durable effect.
- Do not use images for titles or subtitles. Search engine need for the titles and they can read only texts.

2) Adding meta tags

The head section of each page must contain a title tag (and not the meta tag name="title"), and a DESCRIPTION.

The title tag of the page contains, up to 80 characters. This tag is absolutely required.
- The text can include the domain name of the site for the home page, but it should not be repeated on the other pages.
- Titles must absolutely be different on each page else page can be badly indexed by engines.
- Titles must be sentences and not lists of keywords and must reflect the contents of the page.
- The ideal is that the title gives net surfers desire to read the page, it is useful in the lists of results of search engines.

Meta tags

The format of a meta tag is as following:

<meta name="" content="">

To name is assigned the name of the meta: description, robots, and to content the text or the commands.

DESCRIPTION: description of the page (or of the site). Google displays only 160 characters.
It is especially useful on the home page of the site which will be indexed by directories, like for the pages having little contents and mainly images. In the article "Improve snippets with a meta description makeover", Google advices to write a relevant description that must be unique and not the same on all pages.

ROBOTS: directives for the search engines, the default is "all":
- index: the page will be indexed
- noindex: the opposite.
- follow: the dependent pages are taken into account.
- nofollow: the links are ignored by the engine.
- noarchive: the page is not stored in cache but still indexed.
- all: all positive options, the default if the meta is omitted.
- none: all negative options.
- noodp: if the search engine displays a description of your site taken in the Dmoz directory and that it is not appropriate, you can place this directive (ODP, Open Directory Project = Dmoz.org).

These tags do not have any SEO utility, but they can be used for specialized tools:
AUTHOR: the name of the author.
REVISIT-AFTER: ignored by search engines and replaced by the XML sitemap.
LANGUAGE: Obsolete, use an attribute of the HTML tag: <html lang="en_US">.
KEYWORDS: Keywords separated by a comma, up to 1000 characters. Useless, this is no longer used by engines.

FRAGMENT

<meta name="fragment" content="!">

This tag informs search engine that this is an Ajax page et that there is a dynamic content to index (see the Ajax section).

Tools

Spider SEO (written by the author of this page) can generate meta tags automatically, and since it extracts information from the page, it achieves the same operation that engines and thus indicates to you how this one sees your page,for keywords and description.

References

3) Directories

The directories are very important and more particularly, Dmoz. Google, Yahoo, Live, MSN, Ask, etc. partly establish their indexing according to this repertory. In addition, many sites take again their contents from the pages of Dmoz or link to its categories.
It is necessary to find the exact category of the site in the tree structure of the directory. The submission of a site is followed be an examination before acceptance, and the site must have certain qualities:
- complete site and not in the work.
- substantial contents, and in text (not in flash or images).
- the display of the page should not be too slow.
- the site should not be submitted under several different domain names with redirections.
- the contents must be unique. Duplicate content is prohibited by search engines and Dmoz is used by them as you know.

To know if your site is indexed on Dmoz.org, type in the search field below your domain name and its extension (without the www), in the form U: scriptol.com:


The time of acceptance after submission in dmoz is variable and can exceed one month.

About other directories, to know which ones have the most visitors, made a request on search engines with two or three key words: those which characterize best your site + the "directory" word. And consider the first pages of results.
Directories associated to important websites, having editorial pages, are more lucky to have visitors.

I tried a referencing campaign (for another site) on a selection of directories supposed to have visitors, and it resulted 1 point of improvement of PageRank, approximately 500 more backlinks (although if submitted the site to 50 directories!) and a negligible improvement of the traffic. Most of the links disappeared with time. However directories are useful for a new site, and some of them give durable backlinks.

4) Search engines

You can also directly register your site on search engines, without waiting until a repertory accepts them: google.com, yahoo.com, live.com...

The PageRank is the base of the Google engine. It goes from 0 to 10. The highest put you page at top in the list of e answers to a query, once the page has been selected for its relevance. PageRank depends on the number of links towards a page and also outbound links.
A means of knowing the rank of your site, is to install the Google toolbar on your browser, which display the information when you visit your site.

5) Sitemap

Creating a map of your site, and submitting it to Google, Yahoo and Live Search, can improve the indexing of your pages. Moreover you can have a minimal control on the behavior of the robots of the engines.
To create a sitemap file is very tiresome. But there are software which provides scripts with graphic interface and makes it possible to edit it more easily.
A generator of sitemap, Simple Map, with a graphic interface for Windows is provided here.

After at least a month before the Google's update you can check the new popularity of your site with the Webmaster Tools from Google which will displays the number of links pointing to your site.

6) RSS

To add an RSS syndication file at root of your site, which contains the list of the best pages or the last articles or last posts, contributes notably to the promotion of the site and obtainment of backlinks.
For more details and to obtain a free RSS editor, read the article: Promotion of a Web site with RSS.

7) Publicize

Launching a professional website should be accompanied by an advertising campaign with a service such as Adwords.

Some suppliers of domain names with higher cost propose a free optimization to justify the price. The main part is in page-setting by the exact definition and the insertion of meta tags in your pages.

See 10 ideas to publicize your site instead.

8) Documents

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