In order for your website to appear on search engines, you will need to submit your site to the search engines. This will allow your website to show up when people type in specific keywords. Failure to do so may result in very little traffic coming into your website.
Before you submit your website, you will need to add Meta information to your WebEasy software. Once that is complete, and you have uploaded the changes, and then submit your site to the search engines.
Meta Tags
Meta tags are pieces of information that are placed inside the HTML of your web page that contain a description of its contents. This information is used by search engines to list and rank your site. Meta Tags are usually composed of 3 elements: Meta Title, Meta Keywords, and Meta Description.
Meta Title: This is the title that users will see at the top of the browser window. Title tags help search engines determine your web page's relevancy for certain keyword phrases.
Example: SuperE-Store.com: Online shopping for consumer electronics, and more...
Recommendation: Keep the Meta Title simple and short; this is the “gist” of your site.
Meta Keywords: These are phrases that search engines use to rank your website. They can be words or synonyms associated with your website separated by commas.
Example: Movies, Videos, Comedy, Action, Adventure, Family, SciFi, Science Fiction, Horror, etc..
Recommendation: The keywords need to be relevant to the current page. There are no limit to the number of keywords you can have, but certain search engines may penalize for excessive keywords. You can also use misspellings of common words to increase your hits.
Meta Description: A short, plain language description of the document, usually 20-25 words or less. Search engines will usually place this below the title of your website in the search results.
Example: Selling the latest in DVD’s, CD’s, Video Games, Software, Cell Phones, Books, and other HOT products!
Recommendation: Make the Meta Description as compelling as possible
Adding Meta Tags in WebEasy
1. Open your website in WebEasy
2. From the menu bar, go to Build -> WebSite (HTML)
3. Press the Advanced button
4. Fill in the Meta Tag information, press OK
Page Titles
Having page titles with rich keywords is very important to Google and other search engines. The page title shows up in the upper left corner of the browser (on the very top). For example if you look in the upper left hand corner of this page (above all the toolbars for your browser), you will see "[Web Easy] Search Engine Submission". That is the page title.
For successful page titles, you want to include keywords that people will be searching for to find your site. That will help let the search engines know what is in the page's content.
To change the page titles in Web Easy, simply select "Modify" then "Page Title" on the top of Web Easy. If you don't see the "Page Title" option, make sure you do not have anything selected in the page, then try again.
Submitting Your Site to Search Engines
Once you have filled out the meta tag information, you will need to submit your website (http://www.domain.com) to various search engines. For a list of free search engine submission sites, please visit the following links:
Google: http://www.google.com/addurl/
Yahoo! & Altavista: http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request
AOL & MSN: http://dmoz.org/add.html
Note: You can submit your websites to additional search engines, but these 3 links should cover 90% of the search engine market.
For additional information on submitting your website to search engines, and general search engine questions, please visit http://www.searchenginewatch.com.
Once you have submitted your website to the search engines, it may take 1 to 3 weeks for it to show up, depending on the search engine.
Important Notes!
Search engine submission, is usually the very last step in setting up your website. If you upload additional pages after submitting your site, the new pages may not show up on the search results.
Also, once you submit your website to the search engines, you must not change your package name in WebEasy, as shown below. This is because the search engine may list a particular page, and if the package name changes, the page name changes. If a person tried to click on the search result that links to an invalid page, they would get a "404: Page cannot be found" message.
The bottom line: Wait until your website is done, and do NOT change your package name after submitting your website to the search engines.
