Search Engine Keys

Everyone will they you that they have the keys to getting you ranked in the top of the search engines. They are all full of crap. So many people in fact that an entire SEO (search engine optimization) industry has poped up online with an insane following.

We have to equate it to people trying to tell you that you can get gas for free or sell you gadgets to make your car run on water. As long as there are belivers, there will be an industry.

It is true that some elemets are important to getting your website indexed in the searches. But they are no secret and freely offred in the search engines own help sections. They should be the only keys that you are concerned with. Other tricks and gimmicks will cost you more than they will ever produce.

Stick with the basics. It is the basic elements that most websites miss and keep them out of google and yahoo. Either they completely ignore the basics or they are just too lazy to make the effort to build a good website.

Rule 1: TEXT TEXT TEXT. You must have wordsin your pages. Search engines cannot read pictures, they can not read banners and they can't read minds. If you want someone to find your website with the term "Used Cars" then the actual words "Used Cars" must be on your page. You cannot tell google that you want to be listed under "Used Cars", you actually must have those 2 words in your page.

Rule 2: More Text. If you just use 2 words in the page, the search engine will not index your page. It just does not have enough content to have any use to the google users. Your pages should have generous amount of text in them. If you think 10 words is generous then you failed this rule already.

Rule 3: Links. You need to have links on pages to other pages and other websites. The internet works based on links. If the search engine gets to your homepage, it needs to be told that you have other pages. This is done by having text links on the main page.

Rule 4: No Advertising! If you have a bunch of banner exchanges and advertisments on the font page, the search engine will classify your site as spam. Limit the front page to links to internal pages and good keyword relevent text.

Rule 5: Don't spam the search engines. Don't use automated submitting services or programs. If you submit your site to the search engine even manually, several times a week, they will just ignore your website.

Rule 6: Lots of pages. Make sure you have loads of pages. If you only have one or two pages the search engine has no reason to index your website. Your website has little to offer people that go there. As an example, would you pay $10 for a book that was 2 pages? You could read the book in the store and it would have no value to take it home. Give the search engine a reason to include you. Have pleanty of pages with unique and ontopic content.

Rule 7: Be patient! it takes time for the search engines to crawl the entire internet and that time is getting longer and longer. In general the indexes are recompiled monthly, so additions can take several months on average. It would be nice if you could speed this up. But the logistics of reading and processing billions of pages just takes time. And even though people whine about how long it takes them to build their page, they expect google to build billions overnight or even faster. But computers just cannot do that.

Follow those basic rules and your page will be included and you will get your fair share of search engine traffic.