Begin immediately
From as early as possible it is best to be thinking about marketing your web site. It is not a good idea to just think I will make a great web site with plenty of useful well-presented information or that I will have a great selling site with excellent products at excellent prices and people will come to my site. Often with no marketing these sites will get almost no hits and very few sales.

Major Things to Take Into Consideration
Frames are not usually search engine friendly. Tables are usually search engine friendly, but because of the way tables are set up, what the search engines would consider to be the top of the page may be different than how the words appear on the page. Often if you have a left hand column with a menu on it, the search engines will first read everything in this column then read the center column with the main body text.

Pictures are not seen by search engine. Search engines search HTML code and even though a graphic word appears and can be seen on the web site, the search engines do not see these graphic non-HTML words.

5% of search engines do 95% of searches, if not more. Most of the searches come from just a few of the search engines including mainly Google and Yahoo. So it pays to put a great effort to get listed on the main search engines and also to work to get highly ranked on these search engines.

Search Engines and Directories
I do a lot of research on the Internet, sometimes for weeks on end. Personally I mainly only use search engines and don’t use directories very much. The search engine that I have found to by far to be the best is Google. It is the home page that my computer opens to. Also other portal sites use Google for their searching facilities on their sites.

The most important thing in reference to search engines at the present time is to get highly listed on Google. Google is the most highly used search engine and in my opinion is by far the best site to use for searching. You usually have to get search page result listed in the top 20 sites

Besides the general web site there are search and index sites that deal with specific subjects and information, such as Yellow or White Pages and category-specific directories. Some of these specific directories are very popular.

You should add a description to each page header on your site. This is important as some search engines display the description on search results.

A good percentage of search engines do not take keyword Meta tags into consideration any more, but some still do. It is believed that Yahoo! is taking them into consideration now.

Spiders
Search Engine index web pages by crawling the Internet using a software program that called a “Robot” or “Spider.” The general way spiders work is that you submit your web page address to them by going to the submit page on their site. Search engine prefer HTML over other formats.

Sites such as Google usually index the home page only on its first pass. Then on each pass (every 2 or 3 weeks), it checks deeper and indexes more pages. The key is to change your pages every two weeks so that when the spider comes back it will see changes and get more interested in your websites

Some sites do not re-index your site and some do so infrequently that information on the site is often out-of-date.

On my Vegetarian-Restaurants.net site, I submitted to Google and after three weeks the home page was listed on searches, but the other pages were not listed. After six weeks most of my web pages were listed on Google. For instance if you type in “Florida vegetarian restaurants” in Google my site usually comes up in the top three results of over 230,000 pages.

Two month after I first submitted my site to Google, I then added Canadian restaurants to the site. About two weeks later when I typed in “Canadian vegetarian restaurants” it came up on the first page in Google, by the Canadian pages below it such as Toronto were not indexed yet.

Directories
Directories are human made and not done just by computers. You submit your site to a directory and enter the description of your site. Then someone reads your description and looks at your site. They then decide on whether to place your site in their directory and where to place it in their directory. They do not always place your listing in the category that you requested.

The most famous and popular of the directories is Yahoo!. Yahoo also has a search engine. When you use a site like Yahoo! you first see a list of main categories, from which you choose from, then you choose from the lists presented until you get to the category that you feel your site should be listed under

Many of the sites are charging to submit to them. Yahoo charge $299 to look at your site and if you are accepted they charge you $299 each year to stay listed in their directory.

Articles
It is a good idea to write articles (about 450 words) about subjects people do searches for and insert them onto your website. For instance, for a restaurants site you can write article about Montana restaurants. I wrote some articles about natural food restaurants in New York City and this page get hit more often than the main New York City page

General Search Engine Policies
The search engines rank web pages slightly differently, but in general to be ranked high on the search engines certain things are important.

1. Have plenty of unbiased useful information. If you have to improve anything this is the most important.
2. Get plenty of links (if you have useful information people will be more inclined to link to you)
3. Put titles on the page headers.
4. Choose the Web address of your site carefully.
5. Add descriptions and keywords and meta-tags to all your pages.
6. Use the key words in your body text that you think someone will type into a search engine often.

What Search Engine Look For
Most search engines gather information on various sites from various sources. Often search engine gather a description from the first few hundred characters on a page and also from the more relevant indexed words.

1. Absolute URL of Web site.
2. Page Title.
3. Summary description (from actual page).
4. Keyword list.

Searching the First Pages
The key words that you believe people will use should be located in the first paragraph. Usually the higher up on the pages the more value a word will have when the spiders comes through.

Page Titles and Their Importance
Every page should have a title on it that fits the page, as the search engines often give greater value to words used in the title. Search engines often have a limit to how many words this can be, but my opinion is the more words the better, but not more than six or seven words.

When a page is on the Internet then the Page Title is displayed on the top left side of the Web browser. Most search engines display a web site option by its Title. Often the keywords in the Title receive greater relevance for searches than other words located on other parts the web page. When a page is bookmarked the Title is used to differentiate the page.

The title of a page should contain a brief description of what the pages is actually about. It should not be a general description such as “My Excellent Homepage,” but should have a unique description title such as “India, Temple & Holy Places Travel Guide.”

Unless you are a really big site that people will search for by your company name it is generally not a good idea to put the name of your company in the title, as it is an important source that search engines take into consideration when choosing web pages from a keyword search

Descriptions & Meta Tag Keywords
Descriptions for the pages should usually be less than 200 characters, as some search engines do not take descriptions longer than 200 characters.

The Meta Tag keywords are often used along with the keywords on the main page to search, so it a good idea to insert Meta tag keywords for every page on your site.

You can make up a list of keywords that you can use on many of your pages. You can also make up a description or a list of descriptions that you can use on many of your pages.

Valuable Information on Site
What I feel to be the most important thing to be rated high on the search engines is to have information that people want and to update it regularly. The site with the most amount of unbiased correct information will be the site that the most people will want to view. Unbiased information is information that is not trying to sell you something.

For instance, if you have produced a site to sell goods from India and the Far East. The more information you can have about India and the Far East, the more likely the site is to be hit. You can have articles on the products that you sell and general interest articles about the India.

But just because you have the best and most detailed site on your subject does not mean you will rank higher than many sites that have only one-tenth the information you do. This is the real weakness of the Google PageRank system, because many other factors (mainly links coming to your site) are taken into consideration rather than just the purity and amount of valuable information is on your site.

Getting Links In Reference to Search Engine Optimization
You should look for quality sites to link to and also to ask for links for you website.

The first thing you have to do is to add links to other web sites to your Link Directory. People are much more inclined to link to you if you are linking to them. I mainly only ask people that I am linking to for links. Also having plenty of useful links on your site gives readers a reason to come back to your site.

Because I wrote a few books I used various web sites for research, which I write down (I put the name of the site, web address and description of the site). I included these sites onto my Link Directory and then ask them to link to me

If you have an informational site go to search engines to find web sites similar to the information that you are presenting. If you are selling a product, search for web pages that you think your readers will be interested in. Then put links to the pages that you think are valuable on your web site.

I then go through all the web sites that I have links to and first look to see if they have a link directory page. If they do not there is no use to ask them to give you a link, but if I think the link is valuable to my reader I still keep the link to these web site Then I get the contact email address, and then I write them and ask them for a link.

All links are not created equal. If you have a link from About.com or from a CNN article that link will be given much more importance than a link from a small site (many people create hundred of pages just to have links to their page).

Especially important is getting an article published in About.com. When I checked the links for my http://spiritualguides.net site the About.com links comes up as the top link. As they are generally impartial in putting their links in and are looking for important links, a link from them is considered very important.

Depending on the information and various other factors Google judges PageRank on a 1 to 10 value for various pages for their importance. Usually the higher the rating the more likely you are to be closer to the top site on a search.

In the financial field there may be a great deal of competition for particular keys words and information and the competition may be working hard or using devious technique to get their Web site to the top. They may have an assortment of pages coming into their site using different keywords and description on each of the sites.

There are some companies that create pages to link to your various web sites, which create artificial links. I read where one company who was doing this was suing Google because Google had just reduced their rating on their search engine to 0 and also punished sites that they could figure out were working with this company by reducing their rating too (down from 8 to 6 for instance).

The important thing is to get real links and not just try to trick the search engines, because if they find out you are trying to trick them, you can be punished by them by lowering your ranking, even sometimes to 0.

The sites that I have done are mainly information sites and non-profit so the competition is not as tough or competitive. As I feel that the sites that I am linking to have useful information for my readers I do not really consider them to be competition. And I definitely do not take off the link I have to their site just because they do not give me a link back. I think a policy to do this is immoral for a non-profit site to do.

When you make up a link directory page it should be organized into categories. Also I like to give the website that I link to a general description. When I add a link to a site that I really like I look at the site and give the link a general description of the site.

If people write me to put a link to their site, I first look at their site and see if it at all relates with the subjects that I am present on my website. If it does not I do not write them back. If it does and I like what they are presenting I then ask them to send me a description for their site and ask them to give me a link if they have not already

Reciprocal Link Programs such as Zeus or Arelis
Zeus Link Reciprocal Link Generator or Arelis Reciprocal Links Solution are programs that look for keywords that you choose that are located on other sites, so you can find similar sites to yours that you can then ask for links to your site. These programs search (crawl) the internet to find these keywords.

It is not a good idea to use a program to ask for links, as automated messages are often deleted or put in junk mail folder of mail program such as Hotmail. It is best to contact your potential link partners by sending them a personal email or calling them.

Asking For A Link
I write up a bunch of template information and cut and paste it into letters that I write for links. It is a good idea to put in the email letter a URL link to where you linked to the site you are asking for a link, so they can easily find the link you have to them. Explain that both your sites will be benefited by cross-linking.

You should send them a description that you want them to put with you link. I make up a few descriptions that I send as possible description. I figure the more information I send them the better for a description, but usually there is a limit of how many words people will use for descriptions.

Also if you have various divisions in your web page, you may want to ask people to link to various sections of your web site. Many people link to various pages of my web site that they think is valuable to their readers and not just my home page.

Google takes into consideration the PageRank of the web page that is linking to you. It also takes into consideration the keywords used in the link itself to you.

Give Them a Reason to Link to You.
It is a good idea to be fairly persistent when asking for a link. Often popular sites get plenty of requests for links or some site are poorly maintained and they may only make updates to their link pages every month or two. if not longer. So your request may be ignored or forgotten, so a pleasant reminder can be helpful.

You may even consider calling to get a link.

Taking the Competition into Consideration
When starting a web site you have to take the competition into consideration. A friend of mine who has made excellent money on the Internet told me that when he first made his web site he was doing huge (made over $400,000 profit one year), but over the years his share of the market became smarter. For the first few years of the Internet he was rated number one for searches on his subject on Yahoo because he was fortunate to be one of the first persons in his field to discover the importance of marketing on the Internet.

His first problem was that other people starting to sell basically the same product that he was selling on the Internet. Also his competition became expert on marketing their sites on the Internet, pushing him lower down on the search engines. Now it is hard for him to get on the first page (top 20) as his competition is also marketing on the Internet so his competition has increased many times.

An important point to note about marketing your web site is that you may always have to keep steadily marketing your web site because you may have to constantly keep making changes to stay up with your competition.

How Search Engines Worked in the Past
In the past search engine would search for particular words or phrases on a site and then grade the importance of the site. So when you would type a word into a search engine it would give you the site that used that word or a combination of words. People then optimized their site to get higher ranking to make their site come up higher on the search engines.

For instance they would use certain key words frequently on their first and other pages. They would put importance keywords on the page that would not be seen because the color of the type would be the same color as the background.

A major problem with using various methods to trick the search engine is that many of the major search engines penalize Web site that use what they consider dirty tricks. The worst offenders can even be banned from being listed on certain search engines.

How Google Works
At the present time I consider Google to be the most important and effective search engine. It does not always give the best search result, but it usually does.

This is because number one they do not charge for sites to submit to them, therefore basically all the important sites are listed on their searches and also because of the way they calculate the ranking of web pages taking into consideration both links to a particular site and the use of keywords on pages in websites.

The founders of Google (Larry Page & Sergey Brin) at Berkeley decided to create a system that gave a great value to linkage when taking into consideration rankings on their Web site.

A complex formula is used to compile web page ranks. The original formula was PageRank + 0.15 + 0.85 = (a share of all the web page that link to it). A share is equal to the linking pages. PageRank divided by the outbound links on the page.

The present system by Google is an algorithm that gives weight to the keywords and information on your web site and the value of the links coming to your site.

Google also counts as a positive link, links coming from page on your own site, which is a good reason to interlink your pages and also to have a link go from all your pages back to the home page. I would guess that Google does this because websites that have more information on them are considered more important than small web sites.

Google Toolbar (http://www.toolbar.google.com) installs a web browser and shows Google’s PageRank (on a 0 to 10 scale) for all the pages it indexes. A link coming from a web site with a higher ranking is more valuable than one with a lower ranking

Alexa Toolbar (http://www.alexa.com) installs onto a web browser and it shows the approximate ranking of the more popular web pages. . Usually the links from the higher ranked page will have more importance. Ranking is judged by the amount of people using the Alexa Toolbar visit a site. The most popular site is ranked #1.

By hitting link:www.domain.com in Google you can see what links are coming to your site (compiled by Google).

One important point is that Google does not find all the websites that link to a particular page. When you check out the amount of links coming to your site it can greatly change from search engine to search engine. One search engine may think you have 100 links coming to your, another 25 links and another 350 links, so this systems is far from perfect

All Links According to Google Are Not Equal

1. Links from important sites or Industry standards such as Yahoo! or About.com are given more importance with Google than other sites.
2. The more pertinent links to your site the better.
3.. Links from sites on the same subject as your web site are given more importance.
4 . The higher the PageRank of the site giving you a link, then the more important that link is to you.
5 . The keywords on the site linking to you are taken into consideration
6 . The keywords in the actual hyperlink are taken into consideration.

Negative Effects of Links
Links coming from link farms will often cause a negative effect and instead of increasing your ranking they can instead cause it to go down and maybe even cause your web site to be blocked from Google searches all together.

How to Check Links To Your Website.
A great program for checking for links is Opti Link Link Reputation Analyzer. It is a Windows program written by Leslie Rohde. This program checks Google and other search engines to find links to your site. It only checks individual words and not phrases (which would be more helpful if it did).

You can also check out links to other sites that present the same information that you do or a competitor site. By checking out the sites linking to your competitors you can find sites that you can you can ask to link to your own website. Opti Link Link Reputation Analyzer also gives you a good amount of other information.

You can check to see what words that sites use to link to your web site. By checking out what words people link to your page to by you can know which words you should add to your web pages. Also when you ask for a link for you site you can use important keywords in the description that you request goes along with the link.

Link Farms
Some Website design companies and search engine companies cross-link the Website they list. Google expects there to be a reasonable relationship between sites that link together. If it sees a wide amount of link to sites where there is no relationship between them, those sites may be penalized.

Google often gives a deduction for links from Link Farms. If someone links to you from a link farm what can be done, but if you give a link to a link farm then do not be surprised if you are penalized.

Writing Article to be Used by Other Websites
A good way to get links to your web site is to write articles that can be used by other websites or newsletters. All you ask from them is that they put your name, website address, contact information and copyright information.

You can then submit the article or articles to free content databases (used by webmasters and e-zine magazine for content). You can also send your articles to sites that are of similar subject matters.

Optimize On Web Site

The first place to start is to make up a list of keywords and key phrases that you think people will search for on the search engines. Put these keyphrases in the descriptions and META keywords in the header section.

Place the most important keywords in the page title. Place the main keyword phrases in the body text, giving the first paragraph special emphasis.

Repeat the words that you believe people will usually type to find your site and put these two or three words in all your titles. Also put these two or three words in your Meta tags, descriptions and page body. Best that these words are already being used in you main body text.

Use your main keywords in hyperlinks. Put the main keywords in your page title. Place keywords in you image ALT tags Use primary keywords as the names of images.

You should optimize each page on your site. It is best to take each page of your site and depending on it subject optimize it for that subject, using keywords that would best describe the subject.

Optimize all these

Title
META Description tag
META Keyword tag
Heading tags
Image ALT tags
Image names
Keywords in Body Text
Hyperlinks

META Description Tag
This is the META description that is in the header of the page and is a one or two sentence description of your site. Some search engines will use this to describe the page when it comes up in a search result. The description should have the keywords that are most important, but also the sentences should be clearly understood and should not just be keywords. Make the description not more than 25 words.

META Keywords Tag
This is a list of keywords and phrases separated by commas. The main keyword phrase should be first, and the rest of the keyphrases should follow in order of importance.

Image Alt Tag
Image Alt Tag follows the words in your HTML code of you URL or graphic address. When a viewer has his graphics turned off or in an old browser this is what is displayed instead of the image. It is a good idea to put your keyword phrases in the Alt Tags of your graphics. The keywords can be put in images on your main page and other places in the site. Best to put the main keywords first.

Title
Have descriptive page titles as the search engine give importance to page titles. You put your main keyword phases in the title of your pages. Each page across your site should be slightly different to fit the page. The title should actually give a good idea what the page is about.

Your web page title is very important because it is what the search engines display as link text as the result of a search. The title must include your main keyphrases, while at the same time it must describe your business very well and should entice readers to click on it.

It is usually best not to use the name of your company in the Title text unless you have huge like IBM or Ford. Put your main keywords first and keep the keywords in close proximity of each other. Page titles should not be more than 8 words.

Heading Tag
The heading tag separate topics and some search engine take into consideration what is between the heading tags. More emphasis is placed on the heading tag that is the highest. Place the keyphrases between header tags (H1, H2, H3, H4) in the first few paragraphs of the page.

Body Text
A good amount of body text will really help. You should repeat your keywords and keyword phrases through your page, changing the way they are combined. You should have all the words you have listed in your META tags in your main body text. As search engines such as Google may not read the META tag keywords and just the body text.

Each individual page should not be too long. It is best to give hyperlinks to other pages if people want to find out more information that you are presenting. Another advantage of moving people to another page is you can reintroduce the products you are selling or give them another chance to look at advertising you are offering.

You can introduce a subject and then have a hyperlink that reader can click on to get more information on that subject. Like newspapers and magazines do.

Use the keywords several times on the page and close to the top. Use keywords 5 to 10 times per 100 words. When placing your keywords make sure your sentences make sense. It is one thing to get a viewer to your site, but the sentences should be written clearly for them to come back,

Site Map
Create a site map so search engine can find all your pages. Link to all your pages directly from the Site Map and link to the Site Map page directly from your Home Page.

Links and their Importance
Create a link page and call it a Directory or Resource page. Put links to site that you like and ask them to put a reciprocal link to your page. The more links you have to your site from similar site the better search engine will like you and you will be ranked higher

Link Anchor Text
The wording of the text that gives links is considered by search engines. Search engine are giving emphasis to the anchor text that link to website. Therefore it is not a good idea to give a link your home page saying “click here” or “home page,” because the search engine will not really know what the page is about. If instead if you have a site about Cow Protection if you use the words “Cow Protection” to link to your home page, than the search engine will have a good idea where the link is going.

Therefore it is a good idea when you ask for a link to give the anchor text that you would want the link text to be. The link anchor text should include your main keyword text. When you list your links with directories it is a good idea to put in your main keyword phrase.

Besides giving them your site name and URL, you should give them the exact HTML code that you would them to use to link to your site.

Search Engine Submissions
Once you have made a great site and optimized the web pages on your site, then it is time to submit it to the Search Engines.

Some people say not to submit it to Google as it will rank higher if you allow the Search Engine to find your site independently, but it is not something I believe.

Keywords
It is important to use keywords that actually describe your site as in this way you will get high quality users (ones who are actually interested in your subject matter. It is important to position your keywords correctly on your pages. It is best to use two or three phrases as single words will have high competition for them. Keywords are the combination of words that people type to find a subject they are looking. Search engines crawl through a page and record the use of keywords on your site.

After you choose your keyword phases you can check the demand for those keywords by using the Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool. Overture is a popular pay-per-click search engine.

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/