How to get your website listed under major search engines: Part I
Do you want your website to be on the first page of Google? Me too. The first step is to get your website submitted to the search engine(s) you want your website to appear on. Some of these "submission URLs" can be found easily while others are difficult. Here are the submission URLs for a few major search engines: Google - Bing!
There is no guarantee that after one submission your page will show up. I check the search engine every few days. If my website does not appear when using the domain name in the search (i.e www.msilverman.me) then I will resubmit the URL.
Now that you have your website indexed you want to increase your ranking. Of course you will attract more visitors being on the first page of Google rather than the tenth. There are many factors that contribute to your ranking.
Is it helpful to have your website linked to from other websites. For example, I'm currently working on Mark's Boxes Now. Now when Google searches my website it will see a link to Mark's Boxes Now. This will give Mark's Boxes Now a few points.
Another contributing factor are meta-tags. Meta-Tags are keywords. When a search engine crawls your website it will look for Meta-Tags. For Mark's Boxes Now I used the meta keywords: moving boxes, massachusetts, westborough, move, mover, moving supplies, book box, apartment move, packing supplies. You also want to include a Meta Description: moving boxes delivered within 24 hours! everything you need for moving! You can view your website's tags and others using this free Meta Tag Analyzer.
Google Webmaster Tools Dashboard shows a summary of your website.
Google Webmaster Tools is a great free service worth checking out. With Google Webmaster Tools you are able to view your website through the eyes of a search engine. You can see what users are searching for when they click your website via the "search queries" tool. It will also show you the most commonly used keywords on your website. As you can see, "boxes" is currently the most commonly used word on my website. That is a result of this post and all of the tags along with it. This is something which I will change because "boxes" aren't really what my site is about. It is important that you ensure that your sitemap is listed in the "site configuration." If not, you can submit it. The sitemap helps Google to index your website. I have my RSS Feed acting as my sitemap.
Another interesting statistic that you can see is what Google calls an impression. To view this, click on "Your site on the web" and then "search queries."
"Search Queries" page shows extended information on how users are accessing your website.
At this page you can see useful information such as what queries have led to people clicking your website. Impressions are the number of times someone accesses a search page with your website listed. For example, someone typed in mobileme alternative and my website showed up. The avg position is 40 so it probably wasn't listed until a few pages in, lets say page 3. Now if you scroll through onto page 3, my link will show up. Whether or not you click on my link it will count as an impression.