(1) Quality
Improve the quality of your site so that visitors are likely to come back. Hopefully,
some of them will paste your url to their sites. Give out free, useful information.
Give out something to download for free. The bottom line is that there is
no point of keeping a site that nobody wants in a market society where consumers
decide what they want. Having hundreds of inbound links to a site that nobody
visits is simply a waste. You could accomplish that with link exchange and
other measures (forum, blogs and so forth).
(2) Keyword Analysis
Use Google's Keyword Tool and Overture's
Keyword Selector Tool (for free) to find best suitable keywords for your content.
Google's Keyword Tool helps you find a wide range of words and phrases for one
that you type. Overture's Keyword Selector Tool has a similar function.
It also tells you how many times each of the words or phrases were searched and
actually clicked on 'across their network' for the previous month. I suppose
their network includes Yahoo!, AltaVista, AlltheyWeb and so forth, or just Yahoo!?
We don't have the precise answer for that. The following images both show
the results of a phrase, 'url submission.' Simply, find most searched keywords
and keyphrases and use them frequently in the body of the page.
Google's Keyword Tool
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Overture's
Keyword Selector Tool |
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(3) Meta Tags
Meta tags are obsolete (except description meta tag) for major search directories
because they rather use spiders to capture the entire or partial content of your
site and scan keywords and hyperlinks for themselves. But small search directories
still want you to have them. You can put meta tags not on the main page
(index.html or any other extension) but also on other pages.
(4) Hyperlinks, Image Sources and Keywords
We now know that spiders go after hyperlinks (a href="link").
Surround them with keywords and keyphrases and keep them in line with the main
subjects of the destinations. You can also use the alt attribute to give
a key word (or key phrase) to an image. The alternative attribute may be
used to tell what the image is for in the event that it doesn't appear for some
reason. You use it like
img src="google.gif"
alt="Keyword Tool"
img src="image3.gif" alt="MacHouse"
It is important to note
that you should use the main words and phrases of your site that you want them
to pick at the top of the page. When a search directory finds your site
for a query, it often shows what they find at the beginning of the body for the
description of your site.
Furtheremore, don't name an image file 'image1.gif' or
similar. Rather, name it after a keyword like 'search' or 'ranking,' which
concerns the content of this page.
(5) Java, Flash and Frames
Avoid using frames as they say their crawlers don't like them. They also
say they don't like flash - made sites because such sites don't have a real content
on the index page. You should minimize the use of JavaScript since it can
occupy a large top portion of the page, which makes it difficult for the spider
to find keywords and the description of the page.
(6) Link Exchange
Yahoo! and Microsoft do actually encourage us to exchange links within related topics. Simply,
write to the webmaster of the site and tell that you want a link exchange.
Create a link page and paste their link before you contact them.
(7) Giveaways
As mentioned in (1), improve
the quality of your site so that visitors are likely to come back. Hopefully,
some of them will paste your url to their sites. Give away free, useful information.
Give away something to download for free, freeware, shareware, OS X icons and
etc. Create something that can only be used on your site (online).
And people will talk about it in forums and leave a link to your site.
(8) Subdirectories
Create a directory hierarchy with use of subdirectories. Unlike cross-linking,
which is considered as a bad practice, use of subdirectories is quite common
at large web sites. Take CNET (www.cnet.com) as an example. If you click on the
tab labeled 'Reviews,' you will be directed to its product review page (http://reviews.cnet.com/).
Likewise, if you click on 'Compare prices' tab, you will be directed to its shopping
page (http://shopper.cnet.com/). There are several advantages over use of subdirectories.
The most important aspect is that there will be inbound links from subdirectories
to the main directory (index.html).
