My site www.alllet.com is not found on the search engines using the
key words that I have put in the meta, eg. property, dublin, ireland,
accommodation, letting, apartment etc

If you are banking upon the META keyword tag to get you search engine
listings, you are going to be disappointed. This is so, because only
one major search engine (Inktomi) supports them. Major search engines
like Google, Altavista,FAST,Lycos,Exite and Webcrawler do not support
this tag, since some web site owners would insert misleading words
about their pages or use excessive repetition of words in hopes of
tricking the crawlers about relevancy.
 The Modern Search Engines use a variety of other parameters to
associate a webpage with keywords. Most of them analyze the text on a
page to determine important keywords which could be used to represent
the page subject matter. The page title also plays an important role
in this respect.The number of websites that link to yours and their
rating also makes a difference.

 For a brief account of the rise and decline of the META tag, you
should read :
    - Death Of A Meta Tag By Danny Sullivan 
   ( http://www.searchenginewatch.com/sereport/02/10-meta.html ) 

If you want to take a look at how modern search engines work, take a
look at the following articles :
  SearchEngineWatch : Anatomy of a search engine 
       FAST : ( www.searchenginewatch.com/searchday/02/sd1031-in-fast.html
)
     GOOGLE : ( www.searchenginewatch.com/searchday/02/sd1030-in-google.html)

For tips and tricks on what to do to improve your search engine
placements, check out the following articles :
   - Free Search Engine Secrets 
   ( http://www.kaleidoscope-dts.com/secrets.html ) 
   The page contains links to sites that will help you analyze and
optimize your webpage for optimal placement. Definitely worth a read.
 
 - Search Engine Placement Tips By Danny Sullivan 
   ( http://www.searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/tips.html ) 

 - WebDevelopers Journal : Web Site Promotion Articles 
( www.webdevelopersjournal.com/articles/site_promotion/web_site_promotion_guide.html
)
 - WebMaster T's : SEO Tips 
  ( http://www.tsworldofdesign.com/search_engine/ ) 
  
==============
Hope this helped.
If you need any clarifications, just ask!
:)

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Request for Answer Clarification by depressedbadger-ga on 11 Nov 2002 08:45 PST

Thanks very much for your answer. Can you suggest the solution for my
web site bearing in mind my particular solution

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Clarification of Answer by theta-ga on 11 Nov 2002 10:41 PST

Here are a few tips that will help you raise your search engine
ranking :
 1) Incoming links
    DO :
       Get other sites to link to you.The more sites that link to you,
the more relevant search engines consider you, and the higher your
rankings.
    DONT :
       Dont enter link exchange schemes just to boost your rankings.
If Google detects that you are trying to fool the search engine, you
will be penalized and may be banned forever.

 2) More Structured Content on each page
    Search engine try to decide the your site's keywords and its
relevancy by analysing the text they find on the page.The more running
text you can provide, the better.
    Also, the text in relatively larger fonts is considered more
important than text in smaller fonts. Similarily, text that appears on
the top of the page is considered more relevant than text at the
bottom of the page.
    DO :
        - Try to add more content on all your pages. Arrange the
content such that text at the top contains more relevant keywords.
        - Try to structure the content on your page, with relevant
headings. Text is better than pictures.Highlight keywords/headings
with slightly larger/bolder text.
        - Remember that search engines can't read images. Provide
alternative text for all the images you use on your site.Use the ALT
property of the IMG HTML tag.
        For eg., your main page has the heading 'property
management'.But its a picture!! No search engine can read it. Also you
have not provided any alternative text. So it is invisible to the
search engine. It would be better if you could provide the heading in
large font. Or atleast some ALT text.
  Similarily the menu, no text - it's invisible!!

     DON'T :
       - Try to trick the engine by repeating keywords/phrases ad
nauseam.You will be penalized.
       - Try to trick the engine by putting invisible text (text which
cannot be seen by users, but is visible to the search engine) on your
pages. You will be penalized.

 - Do make sure that your Page titles contain the relevant keywords.
Just don't make the titles too long.Right now you just have the
company name in the title. Try to add a short descriptive phrase, or
the subject of the current page to the title.For eg : "AllLet
Properties : South Dublin Property Listings"

- After you make the above changes, be sure to submit your website to
the DmoZ directory project for listing.
          DMoz Open Directory Project
          ( www.dmoz.org)
  This is a very important directory that all search engine draw their
entries from.Being listed here will automatically increase your sites
ranking.
Also submit your site to other directories and search engines like
FAST, Yahoo,AllTheWeb,Lycos,WebCrawler etc.
You could also try searching for RealEstate directories or portals
that would be willing to link to you and submit your site to them.The
more sites that link to you, the better.

Check out the following for more help :
  
   - Google Information for Webmasters, "Webmaster Do's and Don'ts"  
   (://www.google.com/webmasters/dos.html)  
   Google Guidelines on what to do and not to do for a better
ranking.A must read.

  - WebMasters World  
      ( http://www.webmasterworld.com )  
      A place where webmasters hang out to get latest tips on
improving their search engine rankings.
 
====================
I hope this will make you a happier badger.
;)

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Request for Answer Clarification by depressedbadger-ga on 11 Nov 2002 12:58 PST

Thanks very much. Your answer is clear and easy to follow. I will get
to work and see if I can bring about and inprovement

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Clarification of Answer by theta-ga on 13 Nov 2002 06:37 PST

Best Of Luck!
:)

Thanks very much. I think I am getting the picture. I hope my designer
can follow the instructions