SEO(Search Engine Optimization)
Tips to make your site successful
Having a website that no one visits or even knows about is totally useless to anyone. The idea is to get the major search engines to notice and index you. There are several ways in which you can achieve this. I will list and explain a few here.
1. The very first thing you need to do is build a page that's compatible with everyone's browser. One way to check this is to validate your page using http://validator.w3.org If it says anything other than "Passed Validation" then you need to fix it. Now you might be thinking... I see Snoop Directory does not validate. While that is true, I am willing to accept the trade of features verses validation. You will have to make that decision for yourself.
2. Make good use of the Title, Description, and Keyword tags. From the home page of snoopdirectory you will see this...
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="directory, webdirectory, internet directory, Arts and Humanities, Computers & Internet, Employment, Games, Insurance, Lawyers, Recreation, Science and Technology, Software, Blogs, Directories, Entertainment, Health, Internet Web Services, News, Reference, Shopping, Sports, Business, Education, Forums, House & Home, Kids and Teens, Real Estate, Regional, Society, Travel">
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Snoop Directory helps to provide you with relevant backlinks to your webpage thereby increasing your web presence.">
<title>Snoop Directory - Your Link to the Web</title>
Make sure to use unique tags for every page on your site because it will make the search engines "see" different pages. Different search engines use different parts of webpages to determine what useful content the page contains so you will want to make use of every angle that you can.
3. Update your pages often because a page that never changes will prevent the search engines from crawling on a regular basis. You definitely want search engines crawling as often as possible. If they don't crawl your site, they wont show you in search results.
4. Many people will tell you PR (pagerank) doesn't mean very much. These are usually the people with high pagerank. The fact is Google will use pagerank in part to determine how often and how much content gets indexed. The higher your pagerank, the more they pay attention to you. Therefore it is important to get your site listed in as many places as possible in order to get a higher PR.
5. Try to be as unique as humanly possible with your webpages. I understand that uniqueness is somewhat of a ancient beast because just about everything has been done to death but in any case, try. Grabbing a generic template from the internet and regurgitating a website will do you little good in the long run.
6. Try to stay away from fancy websites using such things as flash files. While they can be some pretty to look at, they will be totally useless as far as search engines are concerned.
7. Link exchanges are ok to start but one way inlinks are a far better option. Link exchanges will basically get you noticed but the more you have coming in and the less you have going out the better. Keep your ratio as high as possible.
8. Robots.txt is pretty much useless as far as I'm concerned. There is no reason to disallow any search engine from indexing you. Don't even create a robots.txt file. Again, some people will disagree with me.
9. When creating webpages try to use html names that actually mean something because it will help you slightly in the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages). For example, if you are making a site about muscle cars and have a specific page about mustangs, name the page mustang.html instead of cars22.html - Make sense?
10. When using pictures in your page use the ALT tag as it gives you one more way to promote yourself. Example: <img src="logo.gif" alt="snoop_directory" width="800" height="100" border="0" />
11. You can create a sitemap for your webpage which will help slightly but I have found that most search engines will find any and all links on your page regardless if you have one or not. You can create one with this tool if you are interested... Sitemap Generator
12. Don't be afraid to experiment a little with your page but be ready to admit it simply isn't working and try something else.
