Getting your website ready to submit to the search engines

Putting keywords in the <title> of the page is usually a good idea

<title>Widgets Inc. - widgets in glass and plastic, wholesale widgets, widget repair, </title>

"Meta tags" within the <head> of the documents like so:

<META Name="description" Content="Widgets Inc. - widgets in glass and plastic, wholesale widgets, widget repair, ">
<META Name="keywords" Content="Widgets Inc. - widgets, glass, plastic, wholesale, repair, ">

also the graphics can contain text in "alt=" like so:

<img src="picture.jpg" width="130" height="95" alt="Picture of Deluxe Widget">

This is also helpfull for people on low bandwith internet connections who may have graphics turned off.

And just for good measure I put keywords at the bottom of the page in a tiny font. That is pretty ugly but its a tradeoff between looks and findability.

I used all of these techniques in my local information site PGNow.com and they have proven very successful. Searching for "Prince George's County" yields my site in the first results page on MSN, AltaVista, Yahoo and others.

Information for specific search engines is here

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