Search Engine Listings

[MDW]

Posted this on another board, but evidently it was off-topic there...hope you
folks will be able to provide some guidance.

I've been working on a Web site for a business (my first non-personal site)
and I want to help my client get the best search engine listing. Because this
is my first for-profit site, I'm not sure what I need to do for optimal
search engine placement. I've been poking around the Web, and I think I have
a good start, but there are a few questions still remaining:

1) What do I need to do in order to actually GET a page listed in a search
engine to begin with? Do I contact the search engines somehow, or are the
listings somehow updated automatically.

2) I've seen tips that advise putting meta keywords, etc., on EVERY page on
the site. However, we want users to only come to the site via the "front
door" - the index page. I don't see much reason to put a bunch of keywords on
a page that might be the third part of an application process - coming to the
site on that page would cause visitors to be confused. If I limited the
search engine keywords to just the index page, would that hurt the listing?

 

[Mike Brind]

Posted this on another board, but evidently it was off-topic there...hope you
folks will be able to provide some guidance.

How did you work out that it was on-topic here? Which bit of search
engine optimisation do you think involves server-side programming?

 

[MDW]

Well, server-side programming is generally done by Web developers...within
that population, I would presume that some of them have worked on public,
commercial Web sites....and it didn't seem far off to guess that at least
some of that number have experience with search engines.

However, if you can point me to the "microsoft.public.search-engines" board,
I'll be happy to post my question there.

 

[Mike Brind]

Taking that line of argument to its logical extension will lead to
people posting questions about pensions. I mean, some web developers
must have a pension, right?

I find Google a useful resource, especially Google Groups. A search
for 'search engine' immediately threw up this group:
alt.internet.search-engines, which seems quite busy...