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Danny Calafia's full article on this topic is loacated: http://www.searchenginewatch.com/rank.htm THE FOLLOWING IS REPRINTED FROM THE IADVERTIZING DIGEST: Hello Everyone-- Adam asked me to comment on a couple of questions relating to search engines, in light of the trouble Dave raised about his site not appearing for "role playing games." For those that don't know, I maintain a site called Search Engine Watch, http://searchenginewatch.com/. It deals with how search engines index web pages. It was previously known to some of you as "A Webmaster's Guide to Search Engines," but it was relaunched this week. > 1. WHY IT IS UNREALISTIC FOR PEOPLE TO THINK THAT THEY WILL BE IN THE TOP TEN JUST BY SUBMITTING? I would say the majority of designers never think about the search engines when developing their sites. They don't put keywords in their titles. They don't use meta tags, or when they do use them, they assume that's all they need to do well. They may not make ways for search engines to get around problems like frames. Because of all these things, they may not do well even though their sites may be perfectly relevant to the keywords. Now, I don't think anyone should redesign a site just for the search engines. But you should understand how they work and do the things that will help ensure that your page is more relevant. If you do so, you improve your chances. The other big problem is that people aren't realistic. They want to come up for one word phrases, often something like "money." Lots of people have pages relevant to this broad topic, and only 10 will make the first page of results. Chances are, yours will not. So be realistic. You may do much better for "money saving tips," for example. Or, I would expect "role playing games" to do better than just "games," assuming that phrase is in the page title (but I haven't looked at Dave's site, so I don't know if he's done this or not). The search engines are also not perfect. Sometime they do come up with things that seem to make no sense. You should also not depend on the search engines for your traffic. They are an important way people will find you, but they are not the only way. Follow suggestions to improve your ranking. After that, if you still don't do well, network with sites that do, or pursue other ways of spreading the news about your site. If will probably be far more productive than worrying yourself sick about the search engines. > 2. WHAT THE BEST WAY IS TO ENSURE THAT THE SITE COMES UP UNDER PERTINENT KEYWORDS Keywords in title, meta tags, the headline of your page and then in the first paragraph of your page. Those are the most important things you can do. And, that's not a guarantee to success, but it can help many pages do better. 3. WHAT OTHER OPTIONS ARE AVAILABLE AT YOUR SITE :) The site will bring you up to speed on search engine design, which is understanding how search engines work, and how you need to accommodate them. I am not talking about spamming search engines. I don't like search engine spamming and don't support it. But it will help many designers to understand that WebCrawler doesn't index every web page, and that HotBot will not enter a frame site. There are tips, tutorials and more. I regularly get messages from people saying "at last, everything I was looking for," so I trust that group members will find a visit of use. The address is: http://searchenginewatch.com/Danny Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Watch
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