When visiting a Web site, an agent will record the full text of every page (home and sub-pages) within the site. It will then continue on to visit all external links. Following these external links is how search engines are able to find your site regardless of whether or not you register your URL with them. Submitting your URL, however, does speed up the process. It notifies an agent to visit and index your site instead of waiting for it to eventually locate you through one of your external links.

Robots will then revisit your site periodically to refresh the recorded information. The revisiting of links is the reason why some search engines don't require you to inform them of dead links. Eventually, their robot would try unsuccessfully to update the information on a dead link and realize it no longer exists.

Finally, an easy way to tell whether a Web index is a search engine as opposed to another type of directory is by the information it requires when adding your URL. A true search engine will only need the Web address. The indexing agent takes care of the rest.

1. Use keywords in the <TITLE> of your document making it as descriptive as possible. When visiting your site, an agent will go first to the <TITLE> tag. For clarification purposes, the <TITLE> tag is what a browser will display in its title bar and is not simply the first line of HTML that shows up on your page. (Although your first words of introductory text should be descriptive as well). Search engines will display the text located between the <TITLE> tags when your web page is listed in a search. By making your <TITLE> descriptive, you'll be better off than those who only have keywords within the text of their page. It will also be helpful when people bookmark your web site. If a more descriptive name appears in a person's hot list, it will be easier to find your site at a later date.

For example, instead of using <TITLE> Suncorp </TITLE> as the title of Suncorp's home page, <TITLE> Suncorp: Tanning Supplier </TITLE> would be much more descriptive. It would also place greater emphasis or relevancy on "Tanning Supplier" when calculating keywords.

2. Descriptive Page Text Search engines assign greater relevancy to text located at the top of a page than to text located in the middle or at the bottom of the page. The search engines assume that web page authors will present their most important information first. If your page has a main graphic at the top, you should place some descriptive text either underneath or beside the image. The search engines will index this text and assign it a high level of relevancy.

This will control what appears as the summary of your Web page and will be displayed after the title of your document in the index listing. The content of the description should clearly convey what one can expect to find when linking to your site.

This will allow you to provide extra information about your page to the search engines without it being visible to the reader. While search engines do take these keywords into account when indexing your page, they are still going to index the entire contents of your page as many sites do not include <META> tags. Since this is the case, there is no need to be redundant. Include keywords that will not necessarily be derived when a robot visits your site. In other words, "health" and "fitness" need not be included in your list of keywords as it is part of your <TITLE>. Robots index both the description and keyword <META> tag contents as searchable words. Hence, your site will come up in a search if someone typed in "nutrition" or "health center" from your description. One way to maximize the usefulness of keywords is to incorporate singular and plural cases of words as well as active and passive verbs. For example, diet, diets, and dieting will yield similar but somewhat varying results in a search. Since you're able through <META> tags, why not guarantee you come up on all of them.

Do not, however, excessively repeat keywords in a keyword <META> tag as search engines may penalize you for this. At present, InfoSeek and Lycos are two such examples and others may adopt similar policies in the future. The penalty will most likely be the spider disregarding the <META> tag and extracting keywords from the content of your page as is usually the case. However, some users have reported being dropped from a search engine's database and felt keyword repetition played a role in the removal of their listing.

4. Use ALT tags especially if your site contains multiple photos or graphic-image maps at the top of your home page. Some search engines will take into account the text within an ALT tag when creating your site's description and keywords. In addition, you will be greatly appreciated by all people who visit your site with their Auto Load Images option turned off or by those who prefer to use character browsers.

Indexing Characteristics Specific To Individual Search Engines: Excite

1. Especially at the beginning of your page, be as concise as possible and limit non-descriptive sentences. If the Excite robot comes across a number of ambiguous phrases, it will have to look deeper and deeper into your site to determine its theme and site summary. Along the same line, too little text will also force the robot to travel further into the site for more information in order to establish a theme.
2. Excite's indexing software places preference on complete, punctuated sentences. If you have content, such as a quote, at the top of your page that you do not want Excite to include in your site summary, do not display it as a complete sentence. This will lessen the chance that the quote will be included, but will not guarantee its exclusion.

HotBot / Inktomi

1. HotBot supports both the keywords and description <META> tags.
2. If you strongly believe that your site was not ranked as high as you thought it deserved in a search query, HotBot allows you to send them an email to bugs@hotbot.com. Be sure to include the URL of the search page.

InfoSeek

The syntax for an <IMG> tag code is:
<IMG SRC="/images/clinton.gif" ALT="picture of President Clinton">

How do I optimize my registration with a directory? Since directories are hierarchical databases organized by subject, subject category selection would logically be the most critical aspect of linking your site to a directory. Give some thought to which category(s) your URL should be placed as this location will ensure the right people (those interested in your site) will be visiting your link. URL registrations can quickly become complex process when every directory contains a different sub-categorization scheme.

1. Do not assume a category (i.e. Entertainment) means the same thing on every directory.
2. Take the time to drill down within the directory until you come to the subcategory most appropriate for your site. If you find many organizations similar to your own listed, you're probably in the right place.
3. Do not choose a less fitting category because it's either alphabetically desirable or doesn't contain many other links. If it is not appropriate, there is no reason to believe anyone clicking that category would be interested in visiting your site.
4. If you cannot find an appropriate category, do not hesitate to suggest a new one. This advice even applies to Yahoo!! Do you think the Yahoo! staff thought of all 22,000 headings all by themselves?

Yahoo:   Since Yahoo! is well ... Yahoo!, it will be discussed separately from the hundreds of other directories. It actually is unique from all other directories in that you could be listed on Yahoo! without having submitted your URL. They make use of a robot that searches for new sites at certain Internet locations (i.e. announcement sites, etc.). Despite Yahoo!'s implementation of this search robot, mostly all of their new additions still come via their "Add URL" form.

Your Yahoo Submission Made Easy

1. Find your Yahoo category.
From Yahoo's home page, drill down and locate up to 2 Yahoo categories that best describe your Web site. A good indicator that you have found an appropriate sub-category is when you scroll down and see sites already listed that are similar to your own, or, even more so, find a direct competitor! If after searching through a number of Yahoo categories, you still are not sure where to place your site, try searching by a keyword you would want your site to be found under. Existing Yahoo categories will be displayed with the search results.

TIP: Yahoo requires commercial sites to be placed within a Business and Economy subcategory - either under Companies or Products and Services. Personal Home pages must go in the Entertainment/People category. If your site is regionally specific, add it to the appropriate subcategory under the Regional heading category.

TIP: If suggesting more than one category, press the ADD URL icon when on the category of your first choice. Then enter the string of the second category into the Additional Categories field. To avoid making a typo to a long string, copy the URL located within the Address or Location field of your browser. To do this, highlight the text after http://www.yahoo.com/ with your mousse. Right mousse click and release the mouse over 'copy'.
For example:
Business_and_Economy/Companies/Music/ CDs__Records__and_Tapes/Online_Shopping/

2. Click the Add URL icon at the top of the screen.
After finding the category you wish your site to be placed within, click the Add URL icon at the top of the screen. This will take you to the Yahoo submission form with the Category fields already pre-filled.

3. Fill out the ADD URL Form
Two particularly important fields are the Title and Comments fields. Yahoo does not allow you to suggest keywords in their submission form. Instead, it will use both the Title and Comments fields to derive search words for your site. Therefore, think carefully about what keywords you want Yahoo to list you under and construct your Title and Comments fields around them. Do not, however, just submit keywords separated by commas. Enter complete, coherent phrases/sentences.

Example of an optimized title:
Brian's Music Store, CD's for sale

TIP: Your title should not exceed 50 characters (including spacing).

Example of an optimized Comment:
Pop, Rock, New Age and Alternative CD's. Many artists, your favorite music, CD's on sale.

TIP: Your comment should not exceed 20 words or 200 characters (including spacing).

4. Click the Submit button.
Once you have completed the form, click the Submit button to send your Web site information to Yahoo. If the form has been filled out properly, Yahoo will display a screen that thanks you for the submission. If there is an error in the submission form, Yahoo will display a screen informing you that the submission has failed and, depending on the error, tells you why the submission failed. In the case of a failure, press the Back key on your browser, make the necessary changes and resubmit.

5. Check your listing
Yahoo states that it should take two weeks for your site to be listed. They recommend you do a search for your URL. If your site is not listed, then resubmit your entry using the Add URL function in Yahoo. For more information, check out Where's My Site on Yahoo.

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When will I need to inform search engines and directories of updates to my Web pages?

For search engines: Make updates to listing:

	If your URL changes, you will need to resubmit. Some search engines have Dead Link forms for you to fill out. Those that do not will drop the old URL from its records the next time it tries to visit your site at the old address and is unable to find it.
	If the content of your site changes so extensively that the abstract no longer adequately describes your site. These changes, however, will be taken into account when the indexing agent next visits your site to refresh its information. Resubmitting will hasten this process.

For directories: Make updates to listing:

	If your Web site address (URL), description, or category classification changes, you will need to inform the webmaster of that directory.
	If your category classification has changed and you are now inaccurately located within the directory's index.

Do not make updates to listing:

If there has been minor changes made within the site which do not alter the site's description. If the content or purpose of the site remains the same, you are not misleading anyone who chooses to visit your site based on the original description.

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