Step by step SEO: Chapter 5

Some search engines will allow you to submit (to replace or add a page to the index) a URL once every day and changes are usually live quickly (faster than other search engines), so use the search engine with the fastest indexing process to 'debug' your keywords and Search Engine Optimization tactics. Unfortunately this submission cycle varies, so you might need to submit pages to all major engines, but certainly not all 200 search engines. It is important to understand that the time it takes for a search engine to actually respond to a submission and to place you into their index varies greatly day-to-day. Search engine indexing was once a matter of hours, and now is weeks. You would be wise to consider submission to other engines as well to cover your bases. How search engines work is a wondrous thing, and every engine is different.

Once you have selected your major keywords, add the main words to your TITLE string, your META description string, your META keywords string, ALT tags (image tag parameter), and especially imbed them into your top-of-page displayed content. Try to use as many keywords as grammar will allow in your opening few sentences since this sets the topic for the page and contributes to the theme of the site.

Keyword tuning is an iterative loop (you keep doing it) until you rank reasonably well on several search engines. At that point you at least have the right words and a reasonable META keyword tag. But some search engines use different strings to determine keywords and their algorithms downplay or ignore META tags. These search engines extract keywords from the content on your page, so you need to place your best search words throughout the displayed content for your page. An example (grossly oversimplified) would be:

important-keyword-phrase

anchor-text-with-keywords

Note: If you are not "programming" the design of your own web site and are not familiar with how to add HTML code, please contact your web designer and request that they add these commands.

Hint: some search engines ignore content in comment blocks, but some other engines may process this content. Also, some engines processes ALT text for your images as keyword text as long as you do not spam these areas. However, at least one search engine has added indexing logic to consider the exact (or long-string) duplication of substantial portions of your keyword list in this fashion as spamming, and your entries will be removed within a week of their addition. To get around this, reword your keyword list to read as sentences, and place them in content appropriate to the page.Once the same words are in your META title, description and keywords, and also in other text (Alt and comments) and displayed content, and you are satisfied with your results, and only then, is it appropriate to submit your URL's to each major search engine. We suggest that you pace your search engine submissions, adding only up to five pages per day per site as a maximum, and not doing submission more than two or three times per week. As a result, performing the above add requests as scheduled will allow you to remain within the acceptable range for most search engines.

Hint: the engines will regularly discard search engine submissions without processing them. By resubmitting you have a higher probability of having one of your submissions "take". Also, some indexes appear to give preference to "fresh" submissions as determined by the date of last update and the last submission date. So you should update your site often following prescribed Search Engine Optimization tactics and resubmit at least twice per month.

Allow two to four weeks for each search engine submission to be indexed in each major search engine. If you do not show up (as is common), then resubmit. If you continue to miss the search engine rankings results you desire, then go back and review your keyword usage, either increasing or decreasing frequency until you have the desired results. Suggestion: on the Yahoo directory, register regionally instead of nationally (they will add you everywhere as well, but you get registered much quicker regionally), and on the others, register frequently until you are listed. Your ratings in the organic search results appear to be affected and while Yahoo is changing this is still a good move.