The prime piece of internet real estate everyone desires is a top ten listing on one or all of the major search engines: AltaVista, directhit, excite, All the Web, Go Network, GoTo.com, Google, hotbot, Inktomi, looksmart Lycos, MSN, Netscape, NorthernLight, RealNames, snap.com, and of course Yahoo. But just as with any prime property, there is heavy competition for these listings and you need some smarts to guarantee your site's success.

There are a number of steps to ensure that your site could make this top ten. First, submit your URL (Web site address) to each search engine. Some search engines ask for your site's descriptions or keywords, but for the most part, all they ask is that you click a button that says "add URL". You then type in your URL and hit the submit button.

Where do you find the "add URL" button? Directions differ slightly for each site, but let's take www.excite.com as an example. Once on Excite, click through their directory to find the category on which you would like to be listed. For example, if you were listing a continuing education program, you would first click on "education," then "continuing education." At the bottom of the "continuing education" page is a button that says "add URL." You'll need to continue to check your ranking and keep submitting your site on a regular basis. You are not penalized for resubmission.

Does submitting your site mean it will be in the top ten of each of the major search engines? Not necessarily.

To further ensure your listing, your site should be developed with the intent to garner a top ten listing in the search engines. There are a myriad of different strategies to accomplish this; some depend upon technological expertise. Including key words or descriptions that define your site in both your HTML title and meta tags are an essential step.

Title tags are everything. When the search engines come around to index your site, the words in your title tags will be the words people use to try to find you through the search engines. Meta tags allow you to describe your site to the search engines instead of allowing the search engines to index your page according to their own definition.

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Be sure that the key words in your title and meta tags are short and to the point. Normally the title contains the name of the business and several highly targeted phrases that describe it.

The meta tags can go into more description about the site, but they too should be concise. Any unnecessary text in a meta tag can be confusing to a search engine and keep your site from being ranked.

Title and meta tag keywords or descriptions should correspond to the text on your site. The text on your site should be in HTML tags and be placed as high on the home pages as possible. Another key component of site structure is to include links to other pages on your site high on your home page as well as a site map to your entire site. The search engine crawlers will index all the pages on you site if there is a link to them on the submitted page.

A cohesive message in your title, meta, alt (image tags) and html tags can make all the difference in getting your site indexed on the major search engines.

You can check to see what a popular site has done in their tags by going into Netscape or Explorer and clicking on "page source" or "source" under the View menu. This allows you to see how their meta tags are structured and written.

What should you not do on your site?

Invisible text or search engine spamming with key words will most likely get you knocked out of search engines. Other poor search engine design problems include Javascript, frames, and even tables in your site. For more information, check out www.searchenginewatch.com, a site dedicated to helping you gain a top ten Web listing.

I don't trust software programs that submit my sites to search engines. Go ahead and use them for minor sites, but take the time to submit to the major search engines yourself on a regular basis.

Be aware that there are hundreds of search engines, directories, announcement sites, geographic sites, and specific-interest sites that could be of value to you. To find them, well, do a search on the BigHub.com or one of the sites listed above. Good luck.

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