Search engines can be a great tool to help drive traffic to your website. Here are some ways to help get your website in search engines without having to spend any money.  Do all of these, and your website will be in search engines for sure. 

<meta> tags:  When building a website, include meta tags to host a description and some key words.  Avoid being repetative and using terms like “Click Here!”  Do not use all-caps lettering, most people find it annoying - search engines like Google don’t like it either.  Make sure your description really does describe your website, and your keywords have to do with the content of your website.  Don’t use too many keywords.  Limit yourself to 10 or 12 keywords maximum.

Be Informative:  If you want to drive traffic to your website through search engines, it’s important to be informative and helpful.  When writing information on your website, be clear, detailed, and structural.  This way, when people try to find something through a search engine, your website will be pulled up earlier in the list of websites.

External Linking:  This is huge, and it could be easier than you think.  If you have a Myspace, Facebook, or other public networking account, put a link to your website on your page.  For example when spiders/search engine robots scan Myspace, they will find your link and it will be added to their database.  Also, if you’re a part of a message board, put a link to your website in your signature.  When sending e-mails, make a habit of putting a link to your website at the bottom of your e-mail.

Manual submission:  Submit your website to major search engines and major open directories.  Here are some links to do so:

1. http://www.dmoz.org
2. https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit

Yes I know, that’s not very many places to submit your site, but Dmoz and Yahoo will send your site to various search engines – Yahoo powers alot of search engines.

Webmaster Tools/Sitemaps:  Generate a XML Sitemap and put it in the root of your online content folder (many times this folder is known as “htdocs” – it’s the folder where you store all content viewable on the internet.)  If you don’t know how to generate one, that’s ok!  Go to http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/  This website will generate one for you automatically that you can download.  Save the file as “sitemap.xml”

Now go and sign up to some webmaster tools/developer centers and submit your sitemap.  These services are free and they will help get your website in search engines sooner.  Here are a couple ”centers” that you can use:

1. www.google.com/webmasters/tools
2. http://webmaster.live.com/

There are more out there for different search engines that you can find.  Using these tools allow your website to be put in search engines faster, and having a “sitemap.xml” file on your server helps all your pages get scanned, and shows how often you would like the robots to scan your website as well.  This way, your content is updated regularly in search engines!

There you have it!!  Some good, free, and easy ways to help get your website in search engines.  If you complete all these steps in the span of a few days, don’t expect your website to be in search engines the next day.  All websites need approval before being submited, and it can take weeks, sometimes months, before a website is accepted, even if you take extra measures.  However, with my experience, I’ve never had to wait more than two weeks before my website got in search engines, and I didn’t have to pay a dime.

I do the same thing for my customers and, again, it has never taken more than two weeks before I got the websites in search engines.  So obviously, this works

Now there are measures you can take that guarantee you in the top listings in search engines, but you have to pay individual search engines for that – and it can be expensive.  So, if I were you, I’d suggest sticking with these tips – besides, what have you got to lose?   Try them, and I’m sure you’ll be in search engines in no time

What Do You Think?
How do you drive traffic to your website?  Have questions about web design?  Would you like FunkyTower to build your website?  If you have anything to say, I’m all ears – just send your thoughts to david@funkytower.com, and I’ll do all I can to get back to you

Take it easy,
David Crandall

This entry was posted on Friday, August 8th, 2008 at 6:37 pm and is filed under Search Engines, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.