If you register your pages in the search engines without some prior advise, your page may end up lost behind all your competitors. It happened to me, when registering my first page with the search engines.

There are many things you can do with your web page to index good in the search engines. You will find the most important information in this page, all easy and simple.

Search engines have different methods to decide where your page should go, either on top, or the bottom. In order to improve their sites, and avoid spammers (people who cheat when submitting their pages to be placed ahead of you), they take many consideration to rate your page. The big problem is that they all have different standards.

Many search engines will use a ROBOT to examine the SOURCE of your page (source is the html program used to build your web page). The robot will come to your page and read the title, meta tags, notes in the graphics areas, the links on your page, and the text in the web page. The robot is looking for a repetition of words, so it will place your web page where it belongs, depending on the words they find in your page. 

Let's start with META TAGS
The META TAGS are a hidden note that you can find in the SOURCE of any web page. You can see the SOURCE in your browser, by going to the top, press VIEW, and then SOURCE or DOCUMENT SOURCE. They are usually between the tags of "/title" and "/head". The most important meta tags are:

"META NAME="Keywords"..."    and    "META NAME="Description"..."

Not all pages have META TAGS, I think they should.

Now, in the "keywords" area, you have to find the keywords that "YOUR CUSTOMERS WOULD USE WHEN LOOKING FOR YOU" in a search engine. It's very important to find out what keywords they would use, they are not always the same as the ones YOU would use. I suggest picking maybe 4 or 5 keywords. If you pick too many keywords, your meta tags are spreading out too much and won't be efficient.

DO NOT use the most popular keywords: Real estate, web page, computers, etc. The competition may be too much. Try to find something different, new or unusual about your page and business, and go with it. Also, use phrases, usually people will type 2 or 3 words when using the search engines, think what your customers would type. Thesaurus may help you find some more words.

Last year AltaVista would let you repeat the same keyword up to 7 times in the "META NAME="Keywords" area, but that would be consider spamming in others. This year AltaVista accepts 3 REPETITIONS for each keyword, so do not put any more.

Let's say you sell Cars & Parts. Then in the " Meta Keyword" area you write: "Autoparts" 3 times and "auto" 3 times, this can be considered a repetition of the word "Auto" 6 times. Then you are out.

All the keywords should be in PLURAL. Some say you have to put comas in between, others say you shouldn't. Well, I'm not really sure who is right. Only a few search engines will read and use the "META NAME="Keywords", but since AltaVista, Infoseek and the arrogant people working at Hotbot do, it is important to have them.

"META NAME="Description", this is what usually (not always), will show as the description of your page in the search engine. This is what your customers will see first, and in a few seconds, decide if it's worthy to visit you.

So, do a short description that will attract your customers to your page. Also, some search engines will accept 15, or 25 words; and then cut you off. My advice is to have a short description maybe of 10 or 12 words, "Period", then, next sentence a second description of 10 more words. So if you get cut off, the first half will be enough to create curiosity to your customers, and lure them in. You have to put some keywords here also, without sounding boring and repetitive.

The TITLE
This will show in the top left area of your browser. This is even more important than the META TAGS. The title of your page has to have the main keywords that your customers will use in the search engines.

Many webmasters repeat their keywords so much, that their titles are more than a dozen words long.

Now, let's say you sell Auto Parts wholesale. Your title could be:

• Auto Parts Wholesalers, parts for trucks, motorcycles, used cars parts, rebuilt used & new parts all models cars.

That is 17 words, and plenty of keywords. Now let's say your competition have this title in their page:

• Auto parts wholesalers.

The first title is good if you only have one page, and I wouldn't write more than 9 words (keywords). So if someone is looking for used parts, or used truck parts, there is a chance you may be in the first 2 or 3 pages of the list.

Now, if someone is searching for "auto parts wholesale", the second title would come up much better, since it only has 3 words, and is exactly what the search is. Your title is not as spread out as the long one. This is good if you have several pages, so each will have a specific name, i.e. "wholesalers auto / cars parts", "used trucks parts, wholesalers", "used cars parts, wholesalers", "motorcycles used parts wholesalers".

There, instead of having one page, you have four pages; each will be an entrance to your site. I have about 70 pages at the moment, in a few months I will get up to 100. Some of them come up number one in search engines like AltaVista.

The same as the "META NAME="Description", your title also has to tell your visitors what your web page is all about. A few search engines, like WebCrawler, only shows your web page title on the screen, and that title has to persuade your visitors to come to see your page.