Hi freeholdnick!
As the author of a number of small web sites I have faced this problem
before, but having worked round it I am hopefully now in a position to
help you out.
The problem for sites such as that of Freehold Technology Services is
that search engines can't find sites unless they are linked to from
pages which are already listed by the search engine or are submitted
manually. For a new venture this can be a difficult first step. My
first piece of advice would therefore be to research other businesses
either in your area or who provide related services and offer to swap
links with them. ie. You place a link to them on your site if they do
the same for you.
Manually submitting your site to as many search engines as possible is
the next step. Ultimately search engines are run by their managers to
create revenues and many do this by charging web site authors a fee to
include their site in the search listing. However most search engines
also have a free submission option which I think is probably the
single most useful tool in getting your site listed. The following
links point to the URL submission pages on a few of the top search
engines.
AllTheWeb
http://www.alltheweb.com/add_url.php
Altavista.com
http://uk.altavista.com/submit/home
Google
://www.google.co.uk/addurl.html
Hot Bot
http://www.hotbot.lycos.co.uk/submit.html
Lycos
https://secure.lycos.de/luk/service/addasiteCSR.php
You may notice that these pages are the UK versions of the search
engines. This is because whilst researching this question I noticed
that the 'Free Submission' option is frequently not available with the
American '.com' options. This will not particularly effect the listing
of your site but will save you money.
Directories are important sources of information for many search
engines and differ from the previous submission pages in that your
site will be assessed for suitability of entry by a human editor
instead of a computer. Most directories are organized into categories
to make them more manageable and it is important for the submitter of
the site to find the correct category to submit to. It is also
important to read the submission criteria and to adhere to these when
writing a site title and description because sites will generally be
rejected if they are not described in an unbiased and descriptive
manner. In my opinion the most important directories to submit to
are:
Open Directory Project
http://dmoz.org/
Yahoo.com
http://www.yahoo.com
In both cases, work down through the hierarchy of categories until you
find one appropriate to your site and then click on the 'Suggest a
Site' link at the bottom of the page (for Yahoo) or the 'Add a Site'
link at the top (for ODP). You will then be guided through the
submission process.
Once you have submitted your site to the search engines it is
important to make it attractive to them from the content point of
view. An appropriate site title is important and your current choice
of 'Freehold Technology Services' does the job well.
The site description and keyword in the HTML meta tags are often
over-rated in that are open to abuse by sites which just cram them
full of the most searched for words. However they are worth getting
right and your description is fine, but I would suggest that you
include some more keywords. For example, as well as 'consulting', how
about 'consults', 'consult', 'consultant', etc. thereby increasing the
chances of one of these words appearing in a search? Including common
spelling mistakes is also worthwhile eg. 'consultent'.
Most importantly however is the actual content of the site. Almost
all search engines keep a list of the most frequently used keywords in
the body of text within the site itself. Also the alternative text
for images contained within the <ALT="xyz"> HTML tags are browsed to
indicate the content of the site. It is definitely worthwhile
including information such as this to help guide a search engine's
software.
There are many companies online who will claim to submit your site to
all the search engines and improve your rankings in the search
results. I would advise against using any of these services and
suggest that there is no substitute for high quality content in the
site itself and taking the time to use the submission pages.
As a final comment, search engines are overwhelmed with submissions
and their searching software ('spiders' or 'crawlers') cannot
instantly update their index, so it may take anything up to a few
months for you site to appear, but don't give up hope!
Here are links to a number of useful articles and sites:
Search Engine Optimization FREE!
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/01/23/index1a_page3.html?tw=e-business
Search Engine Optimization Tips by Submit It!
http://www.submit-it.com/subopt.htm
How to Web Design for Web Positioning
http://webpositioning.co.il/web-positioning-articles/web-positioning-articles.html
Search strategy:
search engine optimization advice
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=search+engine+optimization+advice&btnG=Google+Search
It may seem like a lot of work just to be listed in a few search
engines, but I would definitely say it is worth it! Good luck with
your searching,
mcfly-ga :) |
