Search Engines
When designing your site, there are some simple points to remember which will greatly
improve the chance of your site ranking well in Search Engines:

1. You should include around 10 words within the Title Metatags in each page
    and around 25 words within the Description Metatags. Your Web Design program
    should include help information on how to create the Title and Description Metatags
    in each page. These words should include the main keywords/phrases that you
    wish your site to be found under. Keyword Metatags in pages are no longer
    relevant in determining ranking in the majority of Search Engines.

2. Search Engines also read visible text on a page when adding sites to their database.
    Thus, it is important to include at least 20 words of text on each page for the best
    results. Again, try to include keywords/phrases that you wish your site to be found
    under. Note - Search Engines cannot read text which is in the form of images.

3. Search Engine ranking is also determined by the number and quality/page rank of
    websites linking to your site. If sites which have a high ranking have a link to your site,
    this will boost your site's overall ranking in search results more, compared to the same
    number of lower ranking sites linking to your site.

4. Search Engines also use Text Link Analysis. That is they will also read the
   text of links to your site to determine where your site should appear in search results.
   For example if other sites have a link to your site using the phrase
   "property for sale" in the link, it will help your site to rank better under this
   phrase and also under single words contained within this phrase or those words
   combined with other words.
   If a large number of sites were to link to your site with a given phrase it is
   possible for your site to appear in search results when people enter keywords into a
   Search Engine which include the same phrase even if your site does not include that
   phrase in the content of the site.

Google provides a very useful free toolbar which enables you to see the Page Ranking
of each page in your site and other sites in the Google database. Pages are ranked from
0 to 10 out of 10. Page Rank is basically how important a site is seen to be in the Google
database. The higher pages are ranked, the higher those pages will tend to be in the
search results in Google + all the sites which take their results from the Google
database. Page Rank is determined by the number and Page Rank of websites
which are linking to your site.
For more information or to download the Google Toolbar 
click here

There are only 3 major Search Engines used in Australia, google.com or google.com.au,
yahoo.com or yahoo.com.au, ninemsn.com.au. These 3 major Search Engines in total
account for over 98% of the searches made in Australia.


Free Search Engine Submission
Links to the submission pages of the main Free Search Engines are provided below.
The Google database also provides the Search Results for the Web Pages section in
AOL, Earthlink, Netscape and many others.

Google

Msn

Yahoo


After you submit a new site it will usually take between 1 day to a few weeks for a
new site to be added to the Search Engine's database.

You can see if a site is in a Search Engine database by visiting the Search Engine
and entering

cache:thedomainname.com

as a search.

If you enter

site:thedomainname.com

you can see how many pages are in the database.

An alternative way of getting into the databases of all the major Search Engines
is to have a site which is already in those databases place a link on their site
( provided its from a page which is in those databases ) to your new site.

Search engines continually revisit pages to check for updated content including
links on those pages, and will automatically follow any new links to new internal
pages in that site or links to new websites.


Directories

The Open Directory Project  This is the largest human edited directory on the Net,
                                      and also serves as the database for many Search Engines.
                                      If your site is accepted into this directory it will help
                                      to improve your ranking in all the major Search Engines.

                                      It is usually best to start by choosing the Region and then
                                      finding the most appropriate category for your site from this
                                      point before clicking on the "suggest URL" link to submit your
                                      site.


PPC Search Engine marketing
Pay per click type of marketing in Search Engines is also very important in bringing
extra traffic to your site. For many sites this is in fact the main source of traffic,
at least until their site has been active on the internet for some time and has
achieved a good ranking in the natural search results under a range of keywords
or keyword phrases.

Google is the most popular Search Engine within Australia and around the world.
A Google Adwords Account is easy to setup. You can create separate ad campaigns
within the one Adwords Account and create many customised ads which will only
show when people search for the keywords or phrases that you choose.

An Adwords Account also includes the ability to create a free Google Analytics Account
which provides excellent highly detailed statistics of the traffic to your site.
Custom Search
Custom Search