Search Engine Submission Optimization

Nine Step To Help Make Your Site Search Engine Friendly.

      After you've spent hours upon hours designing, writing, and coding you websites, your finished product is online.  The one thing you're missing, large amounts of traffic.  You're ready to submit to all the popular search engines, but is your site properly optimized for it yet?  This is where search engine submission optimization comes into play.  Making your site more friendly for the search engines before you submit it for indexing will help your site rank well for its main purpose, helping to increase your traffic.  There are several steps you can take to help increase your traffic, and here's how.

1. Make sure your site is finished.  Double check everything on your site, from the content to the links.  Proofread all text, make sure all images are an appropriate size, make sure all links work, and make sure your website will work on a number of different platforms and browsers.
   
   
2. Make you website user friendly first, and search engine friendly second.  The most important thing about your site, make it user friendly first.  Is your design attractive?  Can people coming to your site understand why its here?  Can they get what they came here for quickly and easily?  Can they find what they need in an easy and efficient manner?  There's no point in submitting to search engines if you've made an inferior site that users will instantly navigate away from.
   
   
3. Perform some basic SEO work.  If users will be happy with your site, you should do a little bit of SEO work.  Search engine optimization is a computer industry term used to denote the process of making a site friendly for search engines to index.  There are several steps you should go through to make sure your site is friendly for this cornerstone of the Internet.
   
   • Make sure your text and images are set in html, not javascript.  Content in javascript cannot be indexed by search engines.  This means don't place you text in images as well.
   • Organize everything in a logical manner.  This should have been done when you made your site user friendly (the most important part), but it never hurts to double check.
   • Did you include keywords in your text?  If you haven't, you should.  Basically, the text of your site needs to have a common theme so the search engines know what your site is about.  If you are selling widgets (a fictitious item), make sure that is mentioned a few times. 
   • Don't rely on meta tags.  One of the old SEO tricks is to rely heavily on meta keywords and descriptions.  This makes your site look spammy, which looks bad to search engines.  Place in a few meta keywords and an appropriate meta description.  For your widget site, use the keywords "widgets for sale, new widgets for sale, blue widgets for sale," whatever is appropriate for your website.
   • Don't over stuff anything, keywords, meta tags, images, anything.  This means that your widget site would have 30 different sets of meta keywords and say "widgets for sale" 30 times in the 500 words on your homepage.  This looks spammy and degrades the users experience on your site.
     
     
4. Create a simple sitemap for your site.  One of the most effective pages your website can have is a basic sitemap.  This is a page that shows the organization of your websites with basic links to all pages.  It helps both users and search engines, and should be included on every website.
   
   
5. Double check everything on your site.  Have friends, strangers, family, anybody you can think of look at your site.  Remember, the user experience should be the most important part of your website.  If they still enjoy it and can complete the main function of the site quickly, you're ready to submit.
   
   
6. Exchange links with other similar sites.  This helps your users and increases the validity of your website.  If your selling new widgets, exchange links with a widget repair site, a widget maintenance site, a widget accessory site, etc.  Users will find it helpful, as will your new online partners.
   
   
7. Beware of SEO companies.  No company can guarantee you a good page ranking aside from the search engine company itself.  Anyone who says they have an inside guy, know how they work, or can push your site to the top is lying and trying to take your hard earned widget money.
   
   
8. Read the webmasters rules for the major search engines and eliminate anything you are violating.  If they don't like you having 50 text links on a page, delete them.  If you follow the rules, you'll be much happier.
   
   
9. Submit.  Most search engines have a basic site submission form you can use.  There is no magic trick that works better than other.  Keeping it simple and basic works best. 
   

     Remember, the most important thing about search engine submission optimization is to make a high quality website designed for the users first and the search engines second.  Search engines are designed to boost your traffic, not create it.

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