Getting Indexed on Search Engines :: One Wild Tribe Productions

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If you're wondering how to get listed in search engines, it isn't as hard as it may seem. The most important thing you'll need is a sitemap. This is a file that Google and other engines read to know exactly where every page on your site resides. I'd recommend opening a free Webmaster Tools account at Google, and similar accounts on Yahoo and MSN. With those you can submit the location of your sitemap and they will index your site. I've had sites indexed in two days before, for free, using this method.

So how do you get a sitemap? You can either make one by hand or generate one with a free online utility. If you use a script like Geeklog, Drupal or many shopping carts, you can usually find an add-on that will generate a sitemap automatically when you add content. For static sites, you can use this online sitemap generator.

There are some practices that will help your site get a higher ranking:

Make sure your main keywords appear several times in your content, but don't keyword bomb. You want your content to make sense.
Have unique content that includes information relevant to your site.
Use effective title tags, meta descriptions and meta keywords. You may have heard that meta tags don't work - all I'll say is, Google recommends their use. The meta description is often used as the "snippet" that describes your links on the search engines.
For title tags, make sure they match what's on that page - if the page is about plants, make sure your title reflects that.
If you're using a content system like Drupal or Joomla, make sure you make use of any SEO capabilities that allow you to specify an original title, meta description and keywords for each page.
Avoid "black hat" SEO routines: these include using invisible text, making dozens of duplicate content pages pointing to the same thing, and other less-than-ethical methods. Google will figure it out and ban you.
Everyone misses a mispelled word sometimes. A lot of them will make your site look bad.

My designer told me since he designs in php and has one header for all my pages, I can't have a unique title on each page.

Fire your web designer, or at least inform him that's he's wrong, and give him these codes: phpincludes.txt

What good will backlinks do me?

There's some evidence that backlinks are helpful, so go ahead. Just don't add hundreds at a time or it will be obvious you're just bombing links, and that can hurt you.

What about search engine submission services?

Google, Yahoo and MSN are your main hopefuls, and you can get indexed with them for free. Submit to DMOZ if you like, because a lot of search engines take their listings from there. Paying $100 to submit to a hundred search engines no one visits doesn't seem to do a whole lot of good. If you're going to do it, use a free service and make sure to use an email address you don't plan to actually check, because you will get bombarded with spam.