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Web
Design
Tutorial
#
9
Promote
Your
Web
Site
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Many web page
developers
seem
to
think
that
if
you
build
a
page,
people
will
come.
Unfortunately,
life
isn't
quite
so
simple.
With
over
two
billion
pages
currently
published
on
the
internet,
the
odds
of
someone
bumping
into
yours
is
rather
remote,
unless
it
is
well
promoted.
Web
page promotion
entails registering
your URL with one or
more search engines
and there
are literally
hundreds of search
engines in existence
today. Search
engines can be
national,
international, of
subject specific.
There are, however,
only 6 or 7 very
large search engines
which are used by
most internet users
on a regular basis.
You should certainly
register your site
with each of
them. Depending
on your objectives,
you may also want to
register with some
of the
international,
national, regional
or subject based
search
engines.
When
a search engine
becomes aware of the
existence of your
page, a
"robot" or
"crawler"
(i.e. computer
programs) will visit
your site and create
a set of database
indexes based on
words or phrases
that it finds.
Search engines
differ from one
another to some
degree but in
general, indexing
occurs based on the
number of times that
specific words or
combination of words
are found in the
title, section
headings and body of
the page. The title
and first paragraph
on your page are
important for
indexing
purposes. Your
first paragraph one
each page should
therefore contain a
concise overview of
the page.
When
building their
database indexes,
most search engines
consider meta tags.
Meta tags are
specified by the web
page developer using
HTML statements that
are invisible to the
visitor. Alternative
spellings or
synonyms of
significant words
appearing on your
page should be
included as meta
"keywords".
The
web page developer
can also specify a
meta
"description"
which summarizes the
page content. This
descriptive text is
used as the page
summary in search
engines. If a meta
description has not
been specified for
your page, the robot
or crawler will just
select a few random
lines of text from
your page to be used
as the page
description.
Want to see the
title, description,
and keywords for the
page you are viewing
right now? Here's
how.
If your browser that
you're viewing this
page with has a link
or button at the top
titled as
"View",
click on it, then
click on
"source"
or page
source". A
separate page will
pop up that shows
the HTML code I have
written into this
page. This code is
what the computers
and robots see when
a search engine
spiders (searches)
your web site. If
your code is written
well and you follow
the rules
established by
search engines, you stand
a fairly good chance
of getting listed in
search results.
Usually the top
listings in major
search engines are
paid ads...
"sponsored
ads".
NEXT #
10
E-Commerce
Web Sites
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