website colors, fonts, browsers, HTML editing, tags, meta-tags or metatags, titles and site descriptions,
headers, ADA compliance, navigation, search, site maps, images, banners, content, hyphenation,
submission, URL composition, surveys and email results.

Web Builders: Get Your Simple Site Seen!

Easy Accessibility and Search Engine Optimization

The material in this short article has been collected over years of trial and error, reading trade journals and taking courses.  It is fast but valuable information that shows the quickest, most compact way of getting high search engine and directory listings.  And when search engines can read a site, so can people. 

Guard this training; use it only to promote that which is good, wholesome and conducive to life, else it won’t work for you anyway.

An Affordable Training Consultants
How-to Course

"Affordable Because We Are Free"

This short course covers colors, ergonomics, fonts, browsers, HTML editing, tags, meta-tags or metatags, titles and site descriptions, headers, ADA compliance, navigation, search, site maps, images, banners, content, hyphenation, submission, URL composition.

 (This article is composed with Trebuchet MS Font. Links mentioned in this article are spelled out in the endnotes.)

by Jackson Snyder

Here are a couple GREAT BOOKS on this subject
Davis: Google Ad Tools  Comm The Adsense Code  Grappone: Search Engine Optimization

Even if your web building skills are minimal, what you build can be highly rated by users and search engine robots if you make some reasonably simple modifications to your site.  Some of my suggestions to you are unknown by professional web builders and, if you implement them, your site will be easier to find than those of the pros – and much easier to use.

But before you start getting all that traffic, you must first make certain that your site is ergonomically correct for those who will find it.  (Ergonomic is a flashy word for user-friendly.) 

General Ergonomics

 "General Ergonomics" - no, actually General Sherman famous for the tank, or was that General Pershing?Evaluate the look and feel of your site as though you were a stranger; as though you had never seen it before.  Here are just a few characteristics to avoid, and how to improve them.  Look for:

Goodies: Is it loaded with graphical images, flash productions or Java Script goodies?  If so, it will take longer to load, be passed up by search engines and will be bypassed by hasty visitors.

Flakes: Is it idiosyncratic?  (Or, is it all about your personal stuff?)  Consider how many potential viewers are really interested in reading about your dietary habits and favorite colors?  You may need some really interesting content.  (Unless you are a celebrity or have your site on MySpace.)

Eyesores: Are the fonts small and bold – could they be difficult to read?  Many viewers will quickly pass up a site that uses tiny bold fonts, banners, an irritating color scheme, poor organization, loud music or obscenity.

Ungluing: Are all the links working?  Are the links in obvious places?  If you want to get a message across, pass up the Java menus, animated buttons and PHP templates, and opt for simple textual links within an uncomplicated navigational system.

Cobwebs: How long does it take to load on dial-up?  Most viewers use dial-up and always will until something more affordable and less complicated comes along.  28 seconds of load-up time means your viewer is long gone.  Check your load time on a dial-up system or with a program that estimates it.  (This is a built-in feature of some HTML editors.)

Crowds: Are you building for 800 x 600 resolution?  Of course, screens are larger these days, but the public prefers 800 x 600.  Advanced surfers with higher resolutions will still be able to see your site quite well and adjust their view, if necessary.

Craziness: Is your site consistent?  Are color schemes, themes and the general look of the thing pleasing?  Look for sites that are conservative and tidy.  Try to copy them.  Download them and study them.  If you are like me and can’t find the same color socks, rely on the color schemes of the pros – there are thousands of good examples from which to choose.

Navigation:  Do you have logical and friendly navigation?  “Click the wolves to navigate our site” may be cute, but it is not ergonomic.  It will be fun once, but after the initial thrill, your content must be the star; so it must be easy to find.[1] 

Hindrances: Do you need to have a site map, site search tool or “text only” pages?  Answers: Yes, yes, and yes.  These “customer services” are obsolete in the minds of many web programmers, just as people are obsolete in the utility company’s customer service department.  Yet all these conveniences are easy to code or available pre-coded – free to include on your web – to help your visitors feel welcome.[2]

 To get more tips, put this phrase in any search engine: “tips to improve your site” (keep the quotation marks).  You will get plenty of good advice and pay nothing. 

Now there are a few style rules that you will need to heed if you want to get your site seen – starting with FONT.

Fonts

Sans-Serif: Use common sans serif fonts for readability on a computer screen.  Why?  The serif eliminates enough white space to make smaller point letters appear crowded, especially if the text is bold or a hyperlink

Behold – which of the following is easier to read? 

Click here or Click here?

Click here or Click here?

Click here or Click here?

E or E

Ask your optometrist!

The second of each set is easier for me to read; that is, the Sans-Serif font is more user-friendly, especially when the color scheme of text and background is not the best.  By the way, sans is the French word for withoutSerif refers to “a short line at the end of the main strokes of a character.”  Stay in the same font or font family for each page if possible.  Font families know how to get along. 

Here is a 6 point type reader, even in the dark.Size:  Use no smaller than a 10pt. Sans-Serif font.  It is common today for many businesses to use 9, 8, 7 or even 6pt. fonts for links and even informative text.  I recently worked on the site for my state - one of the official state websites frequently uses 9 point bold italicized Verdana type against a teal background or 8 point Verdana against a dark gray background. 

Either the site owners are seeking out viewers with very sharp vision (highly educated birds of prey), or they want to exclude certain viewers (armadillos, possums), or they (or their corporate webmaster) know no better.  In style characteristics such as these, often we who are simple web programmers have the edge.

Default:  A viewer can only see a font if the viewer’s computer has the font installed.  I like the font for headers but I don’t use it (except in graphical representations) because I know that the majority of computers do not have this font installed!  If your viewers have not installed the fonts, they will see a default font instead of yours, probably Arial or Times New Roman or Courier.  Office 2007 is making a lot of use of Cambria.

If you use Forte Font, Earwig Factory Font or Tall Paul Bold Font, your viewers will in all likelihood see a default font with different size characteristics.  If your presentation is dependant upon the size of your oddball font, your viewer may see a mess!

Here is a good article with listings of the various operating systems’ default fonts:

          http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/res_fonts.htm

Best Viewing:  What fonts should be used?  Recommended fonts for best screen viewing include Arial, Verdana, Trebuchet, Tahoma, Gothic, and, for condensed, Arial Narrow.  There are a few more.  Why such a small choice?  Because most computers, even older ones, already have these fonts installed by by default.  It is highly likely that, if you use one of these recommended fonts, your site will be seen close to your ideal.  Else you may embed your favorite fonts in a graphic – that is how to make them seen!

Serif fonts are best for reading from paper, so are used for text versions of pages composed for printing (i.e. printer version, .pdf, e-books, etc.  Recommended for printing are Times New Roman, Book Antiqua, Bookman and Georgia.  Again, if your viewer downloads your file and the font you used to write it is not installed on your viewer’s computer, one of these will take its place.  Yet this swap is good because these default serif fonts are highly readable in printed material, especially in 10 – 14 pt.

Size:  Business sites seem to be going to smaller fonts, even tiny fonts – but those whom I presume to be your clientele would probably be far more comfortable with a 12pt. sans serif font for easy reading and a 12pt. serif for printing.  The vast amount of text and resources packed on today’s sites, even on the front page, cry out for easier reading and thus better comprehension.

 

Browsers

There is often a vast difference in how a simple site appears on different manufacturers’ browsers.  Some HTML editors, like FrontPage®, have a built in function for previewing your site with various browsers.  Microsoft® will be the first to tell you that this function is meant only to give a resemblance of what your site will look like on the monitors of others.  Who knows what settings individual computer users have employed (purposely or accidentally) for viewing websites?  When I visit friends, I am surprised when my sites actually DO present themselves the way I coded them (or thought I coded them)!

Browsers are Free: If you are capable of doing so, download[3] the latest Internet Explorer (at this time it is 7.0), download 5.5 (which many older computers still use), along with Mozilla Firefox® (20% of the market now) and Opera® (savvy users have this as well as the other browsers).  (The URLs for these download sites are in the endnotes.)  Check out your site in each browser.  Your site will not likely look the same, especially between IE and Firefox. 

Here is another excellent article about browsers and where to get them, current as of 2007:

          http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/find.htm

Tweaking: This is where knowing some HTML 4.0 comes in, for if you use FrontPage or any of the other WhatYouSeeIsWhatYouGet (WYSIWYG) HTML editors, you will need to dive into the CODE and TWEAK it some to get your site to look close to the same in multiple browsers.  (Sometimes you simply have to settle for the close second.)  Purchase a used HTML 4.0 reference book and skim through it.  All your answers are there.

Visiting:  Make a point to visit people in your community who have Internet access.  Check your site out on your host’s computer and, if she agrees, reset her browser (View > Text Size) to make it compatible with a few well-established websites (like Yahoo.com).  She will thank you for it later and send you a key lime pie. 

Spend time with the lonely folks you visit.  Your friends will appreciate it and you will leave feeling like a better person (because you will be a better person).  And you may then have access to your friend’s computer in the future to check out your site.

Mac:  If you use Windows® , find someone with a Macintosh computer, especially a newer version, and check your site out there, too.  If it’s important to you to make a good impression on the tens of thousands who will soon see your site, then you may go on to publicize it and therefore get your message out.

  

Tags and Meta Tags (or Metatags)

Properly coding the tag fields (tags, or metatags) is one of the most important and certainly most ignored essential.  This goes for both amateur and pro web site builders – and it seems especially ignored by those who use templates to build their sites. 

Standard Definition: “An HTML tag that contains descriptive information about a webpage and does not appear when the webpage is displayed in a browser[4].”  This is the standard definition of a tag.  However, this definition is incorrect and has led many to simply ignoring these important little fields because “they do not appear.” 

HOWEVER, tags can and do show up in the browser, and all of them show up when the viewer chooses View > Page Source from the browser’s menu.  Learning how to code tags is easy and pays off greatly in “customer service” to your viewers as well as in the search engines’ ability to properly index your page.

Properly Coding Tags:  There are many free tutorials that teach coding metatags either in the source HTML or via your HTML editor (such as FrontPage® or Dreamweaver®).  (Search on “adding meta tags” for easy instructions.)  There are also free programs that lead you through the process and text templates that you may insert in each of your pages, then fill in the blanks.  (I provide you one later.)  It is not my intention here to teach HOW, but to point out the importance of tags, to show you a special tag that is seldom used, and describe an important tag recommended by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Not TITLE Tag on the First One!Title Tag:  If the TITLE tag is correctly coded, you will see the title of the page at the top column of the browser.  This message tells you exactly what site you are viewing without having to scope the rest of the page for information.  But often the TITLE tag is left with its default message; something like “Home Page” or “New Page 1.”  Improper page title (or no title) shows up in the title bar of the browser.  That’s not friendly! :€

Note in the illustration two web sites; the first, having the Title tag populated by the default text “Home Page”; the second, with the Title tag populated by the actual name of the site and the site address – “Focus Haiti FocusHaiti.com.”  The Title tag is the first text that appears in the browser, no matter what browser.

FamiliarityIn the “Home Page” example, I had to look all over the page to find what the letters in the logo stood for.  I finally found my host’s company at the bottom of the page, which forced me into an area of the screen that couldn’t be seen unless I scrolled down. :€ But such isn’t uncommon – corporate insiders who develop corporate sites are so used to seeing those initials, so familiar with the purpose of the organization, that they overlook the possibility that those outside, especially those using English as a Second Language or the visually impaired, would have trouble navigating from the start.  The amateur web-ster, having seen the site over an over, will have the same problem of familiarity. Again, evaluate your site’s friendliness by looking through the eyes of a stranger.

Cache (Cash):  A tag often overlooked is the pragma tag.  If the viewer has been to your site before, chances are your pages are already stored in the viewer’s computer cache (Temporary Internet Files in Windows).  When the viewer returns, her computer will often bring up the page stored in their computer’s cache rather than the new page you just put up.  Your viewer may continue to get the old page two weeks later until either they clear the cache manually, expel the old page by overrunning the cache by accident, or press the F5 to refresh your page.  The viewer sees the same page he pulled up last month and says, “Nothing new here; goodbye” and surfs on, even though you may have updated the page several times since the prior visit.  A little later, I will offer you a little coding trick so you may avoid “caching out.”

Site Description: This essential field tells the viewer of a search engine entry what a page contains. Look at these search engine listings:

Q & A: Is Yahweh dishonored if we refer to Him as God?
*NOTE: Below is a series of emails between Jackson Snyder and myself. Feel free to visit his web site as well as mine… Craigo ...
www.bibleanswerstand.org/QA_Yahweh.htm
 

Jackson Snyder Bible Commentary
jacksonsnyder.org/arc

The first result has the description tag coded.  The second does not.  I must look further to find out about the second result, or abandon it altogether.

I find exactly what I’m looking for in YOUR site if the DESCRIPTION is coded and I find it on a search engine.  Otherwise, I only know the IRL / URL to which I’m being linked and have to go PEEKING AROUND. 

Code the KEYWORDS tag as well using the exact directions of your tutorial source.  You will want to put some thought to what search terms you expect potential visitors to enter into a search engine to find you.  Some search engines use KEYWORDS (or Key Phrases) to point searchers to sites – and even in some cases to rank sites.

ALT Tag:  The Americans with Disabilities Act alt tag is used to apply a description to an image (pictures).  When the picture is moused-over, the description in the tag displays.  Also, if the picture is gone, the <alt> tag contents still display.  Alt was originally created to assist the auditory- and visually-impaired to learn the significance of an image or illustration through the text description, and if the image contains a hyperlink.  Furthermore, now the alt tag is now used by web crawlers and search engines to rank a site; and as far as I know, a site builder can therefore add 256 more characters to a picture which means significant extra content that will definitely be used by engines and anyone who moused over a picture. 

Every single image, banner and button should be alt coded, and generously.  This is a reason to exclude graphics and graphical buttons unless they are properly coded – handicapped users will not be able to navigate a site without alt- and Meta-tags.  Plain textual links are still the best.  Fancy Javascript menus are fun to play with, but maybe not always practical for a straightforward site.  Simple is beautiful – so consider the kind of viewers you will have, including the aging population, some with disabilities and those with limited English skills. 

Here is a good example of a very descriptive advertisement using the <alt> tag:

<img border="0" src="../images/napban.jpg" width="741" height="131" alt="Be sure to check out Park Models Manufacturing NEW Condo Cottage Models.  You may click the sign below or this Naples Condo Model picture.">

By the way, the alt tag may be coded in FrontPage through the “Picture Properties” form.

Every Page Commitment:  Search engines list and rank by the page, not by the site.  That means every single page needs significant textual information in the Title, Meta-title, Meta-description, Meta-keywords, Pragma and Alt tags.  For the programmer in a rush, the tags can be coded in Notepad and pasted into each page.  Microsoft Help and Support suggests we do tags this way in order to assure that the Pragma tag works properly[5]:

<HTML> (This will already be in the code)
<HEAD> (So will this)
<META HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" CONTENT="5"> (always the same)
<TITLE>Your Web Page Title</TITLE>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Your description">
<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="keyword1 keyword2"> (better to use phrases)

At the end of the BODY section, put in another short HEAD section:
</BODY>  (This will be in the code already)
<HEAD> 
<META HTTP-EQUIV="PRAGMA" CONTENT="NO-CACHE">
</HEAD>
</HTML>  (This ends the page)
[6]

Now keep your content fresh and inviting.  Modify it often.


Navigation

You can have the web spider eating out of your hand.Site Maps:  Some developers think the site map is an outdated resource; however, site maps are not only very useful tools for inexperienced web viewers, but also are prey for web spiders because of the juicy links found on a site map.  The map need not be complicated, but should include all pages, even bookmarks (if possible) and be kept up-to-date.

Here is a simple site map that can be searched by using the browser’s built-in capability (“View on this page” in the Edit menu).

   index.htm ............. {Focus Haiti home, index, links, graphic}
   fb.htm ............... {feedback box, email, no address}
   sitemap.htm .......... {this page}
   \pages
      about.htm ......... {explains the purpose of the site}
      feeds.htm ......... {contains links to xml feeds used elsewhere 4/4}     

      links.htm ......... {history, arts, politics, culture linked sites}
      members.htm........ {listing of current members}
      news.htm .......... {4 news feeds from yahoo, miami herald, etc.}
      opinion.htm ....... {abstracts from articles, blogs and opinion}
      response.htm ...... {page that displays after form submissions}

      search.htm ........ {site search engine}    
      subscribe.htm ..... {contains a vr newsletter submission form}

      weather.htm ....... {4 weather feeds, PAP, Miami, Cap, St. Marc}[7]


Search Box:  I like every front page to have a search box if the site features text (like articles, blogs, playlists, manuscripts, or .pdfs).  The major WYSIWYG HTML editors all have the capacity to insert such a component (though some do not work very well).  There are many companies who will give you a free search box for a little ad.  The problem with site search is that your personal engine must be made aware of your new pages, changes and entry points. 

PicoSearch.com makes this whole search confusion pretty easy with custom-built code, and several styles and many options from which to choose.  Some of the major search engines and directories also offer “free” search capabilities for your site, though some of these come with massive advertising.  You may also put popular searches up as stand-alone web pages – all the more to draw visitors and crawler / spiders.

Simple Navigation:  You have already surmised that I do not like Java Script menus unless they are straight-forward.  My time is at a premium and so is yours; and isn’t your visitors’ time precious?  Sure!  Give them easy navigation with nested links in sans-serif or simple scripts.  And place your navigational components in the same spot on every page (or use and include component). 

 

A Demo

If you have time, go out to my simple home site at www.JacksonSnyder.com.  Please use Internet Explorer for this demonstration, 7.0 if you can.  Idiosyncratic, no?

JacksonSnyder.com

Title:  Check the TITLE tag of my home page at the top of your browser.  This conveys a lot of info to the user (including the handicapped user), and to the search engine.  It’s also very clear as to what I do for fun.  So let it be essential to code the TITLE tags appropriately.  If you want, look the site up in a search engine and notice how the Site Description comes up with the find.

Font: Notice also the ease at reading small print on my home site using a trebuchet sans serif font (which comes pre-installed in Windows XP machines), even though the color scheme isn’t traditional.  (Someone said they really liked the background color, so I kept it that way!  Why not?)

Search: Also, there is a prominent search box.  The front page is deceptively simple since the site itself is huge, larger than most corporate sites; whole volumes of text are on that engine.  But since that’s my page, built for me, all I need is the search box to find that for which I’m looking.  I am no stranger to the place.  But I realize that strangers do come by here – right now about two thousand pageviews-worth every single day, according to the host’s stats.

Pictures: Slowly mouse over the large iconic pictures at the left to learn that these pics represent sites; the alt tag for each makes it clear where I am going if I click on the picture.  I know what each site is about without taking up space or going there.  See also what is read by auto readers to the visually impaired (like Verbose®[8] text to speech reader).  This same info on the alt tag is scooped up by spiders, which therein also find another reference point to the sites that they can use to rank the remote sites higher.  Note also that all these pictures are precisely sized and properly compressed for faster loading.  There are a lot of images on the page, but they load quite quickly.  I know because I recently timed them on a dial-up machine.

Banner: Watch the use of a banner / header image.  Make SURE your banner is optimized for quick loading (a .jpg or a lot of little pics that come together when it’s loaded).  Make SURE the <alt> tag has the name of your site in it and a description of your purpose.  Often (I am told) web spiders will just bypass a site with too many untagged graphics or a big, untagged banner / header.  Spiders don’t like banners in their web, so they might not even look at the rest!  Most of my pages do not sport a graphical banner.


Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Content

Content Is Still King:  Content will always be on the throne.  However, what I do not have on my demo page is content.  The content is hidden in the coding. 

Did you know that web crawlers generally look at the top of the page and the bottom of the page for text?  So choose words and phrases that you think your visitors will put into a search engine to find you, put these words and phrases into the descriptions, the <alt> tags, and in a 300 – 500 word essay toward the bottom of the page.  Try to follow this idea on every page!  “Key Words” (search words or a phrase you think people will find you with) in the title tag, the same in the description tag, the same in some of the alt tags, and an essay at the bottom of the page about your site that contains the key words plus synonyms or synonymous phrases.

A very good and obvious example of this kind of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be found at www.parkmodels.us.  Check the metatags against the alt tag and the essay at the bottom.  You will find obvious similarities.

If you can’t write, there are multitudes of free content sites.  Get a free article and put it at the bottom of the page with phrases from it in your title, description and alt tags.  Search engines, directories and crawlers will love your pages and gobble them up, especially if you change the articles occasionally.[9]

From 60 to 2 in 5:  I used this concept to remake and mirror the site www.parkmodelsmfg.com into www.parkmodels.us.  My rewrite contains text in the top, on the pics, a text index, and an article on the bottom – all of which emphasize key words that I had chosen beforehand – words and phrases I thought interested persons would submit.  And I was trying to get the site closer to the first page on MSN for my search words (key words / phrases). 

The original site was not even listed on MSN though it had been on the Internet for a number of years.  Within 5 weeks, the site had moved past all the competition to the number 2 spot on the first page of search results for the terms I had chosen.  And when it got to number 2, it was ready for visitors.  Not only that, but it pulled the parent site, the one I rebuilt (but left up), to number 3 because of my links to it.

The Beauty of the Hyphen:  One technique that is not being used much (it is a secret, I guess), that will help your site fly to the top of search engine placement is to use your key words or phrases in the actual names of your pages.  Look how search terms are used in the following page names:

cabins-park-model-style.htm

naples-park-model-condo.htm

log-cabins-dealers.htm

park-models-manufacturing-site-map.htm

Someone doing a search on “park model cabins” is definitely going to encounter my site.

In fact, on the www.Focushaiti.com site I showed you earlier, I changed the URL to www.Focus-Haiti-News.com.  I have been getting far better pageview results! 

If you do this with your site, take note: use the hyphen and not the underscore.  With the hyphen, crawlers see multi-hyphenated words as separate words – they see the hyphen as a space.  However they see the underscore (_) as another letter.  So it would be even better if I used the hyphen in the URL: www.park-model-cabins.com. 

This same idea goes for your IRL / URL name choice. 

One of the sites I show in a picture above is www.FACHC.org – there are no tags, alts or text on the front page.  I’ve been looking at this site some and I still cannot remember these letters.  I need to remember something to find this again, then bookmark it.  (Although, because there is only the default name tag, my bookmark will be “Home Page” – that’s a lot of help!) 

Anyway, at the bottom of the page, we learn that this is the Florida Association of Community Health Centers.  I learned that the FACHC is a fine organization that tries “to improve access to quality health services by bringing together agencies, legislators and key persons able to affect health care services.”  (I didn’t find this description on the front page, but I should have.) 

Wouldn’t this valuable service be easier to find if the URL became www.health-services-in-florida.com? Or www.health-care-advocate.com?  Or www.I-Need-Medical.com?  If the instructions above were followed in this site, and someone comes along and pops “I need medical” into MSN, what site do you think will be on the first page?  

 

Submission

Your refurbished and uploaded pages will eventually be grabbed up by the Robots are fast at crawling the web but people are far more thorough.great minds and machines that make decisions about search engine placement.  If you have completed the upgrades I suggest and have incorporated your search terms / phrases into the text of the pages, the tags, the page names and the URLs, then within six months you will have pretty good attendance at your site, and your viewers will be very happy because you have kept them foremost in your mind while building.

If you want to see those results in a shorter period of time, you may pay a company to submit your site – there is one company I use with good results[10] - or you may submit yourself.  It is only necessary to submit ONE page for each site, since that page is linked to your other pages.  And you only need to submit to three companies – in doing so the rest of the search crowd will get the drift.  Submitting any more pages to any more sites is a waste of time.  (Although the offer to submit to 300 sites for $2.50 has captured my dollars many times.) 

Google: The calculation by which Google ranks pages is extremely complicated and ever-changing.  You’ve done all you could do!  Just submit, following their directions, at http://www.google.com/addurl/.

Yahoo: People still count at Yahoo, and your submission may well be processed by a person.  Therefore, if your site is a sloppy mess, real people will cast your contribution into the trash can.  So you may “suggest your site” at http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html when it is ready.

MSN:  People count here too, but not as much.  A site coded for search optimization has a chance to go to the top for certain key words, and quickly.  http://search.msn.com.sg/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSDD.

Yahoo Directory: this is not the regular Yahoo Search.  You will want to be thoroughly familiar with a Directory Service or you may become thoroughly confused.  Submit to the directory here: http://dir.yahoo.com/

The Open Directory Project: is populated by the efforts of volunteer editors - real people.  For this reason ODP results are very important for search companies that use mainly robots.  The reason is obvious, no?  http://www.dmoz.org/add.html

Yahoo Directory and The Open Directory Project are the most important and most difficult places to be accepted and placed.  Because they use people, the information contained in these directories is very important to other search sites that use robots.  Probably no more explanation is necessary.

A final note on submission and placement – you may already be listed (and probably are someplace) on these search sites.  If you have optimized your site with the tips above and you would like to get the site moving upward as fast as possible, you should definitely resubmit your Search Engine Optimized site under a new URL, like

www.how–to-live-good.us

Make sure there are plenty of links, especially links to your old site (which may already be listed).  Both the new and the old may then ascend the search engine scale together.


And In the End

Web site building and promotion is very competitive, but money cannot purchase a clean, ergonomic site or a higher search ranking.   Amateur webmasters, if you have acquired this material and put it into play, then you will indeed fulfill your dream of having Internet fame, getting your message out or your product sold. 

Yet this material has been collected over years of trial and error, reading trade journals and taking courses.  It is valuable information in that it is the quickest, most compact way of getting the job done.  Guard this training; use it only to promote that which is good, wholesome and conducive to life, else it won’t work for you anyway.


About the Author
 

Jackson Snyder lives in Tallahassee, FL.  Some of the sites linked at www.JacksonSnyder.com will betray his whereabouts, or you may call at (801) 605-1715 for further information or help.

 ENDNOTES


[2]   (See www.picosearch.com for instance.)

[4] metatag. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/metatag

[10]  http://www.ineedhits.com/      (08/07/07)