A search engine is a product that numerous organisations have set up as a huge directory to all the websites available across the World Wide Web. Such search engines are Google, MSN, AOL NetFind, Yahoo, and many many more.

These search engines are huge databases that hold basic information about web sites. Details such as the websites domain name, keywords and a description about the site.

Search engines find the details they hold in two ways. The first by a site owner registering their web site directly with the search engine. The second by use of their sophisticated programs known as spiders. It is the job of these spiders to continually explore the World Wide Web for new web sites and add them to the directory.

Making use of search engines is essential as the majority of internet users rely on them to locate a web site relevant to their requirements. Getting your web site details stored by a search engine is a science and will initially take up to two months for your site to be recognised and registered.

The goal of optimizing your web site for search engines in NOT to trick the search engine into thinking your site is about something that it’s not. It’s about telling a search engine, in no uncertain terms, what your site is about. By so doing, you can achieve inclusion on their database and secure a place near the top of their lists.

It is the search engines spiders’ job to look at your site and check that it is valid by checking your keywords and description against the content of your pages. It will also follow links to other web sites and check their validity.

Spiders and filters alone don’t really paint a very accurate picture of your site. Optimization code within your web pages, on the other hand, leads the search engine to match your site up with specific queries in your field. This is a service to viewers trying to find a site with your specific content.

There are a number of ways to optimize your web site for search engines. The most important being to define a list of keywords relevant to your site. Another is to provide a small accurate and truthful description about your website.

Keywords are a list of words and phrases that a viewer may type into a search engine to find a web site of your content. When choosing keywords for your web site you should;

Determine why people would come to your site. What are they looking for? Who are your expected audience?

What queries would these people use to find a site like yours? What would they type into a search engine? Make a list of these words. These may or may not become your keywords.

Ask family, friends and acquaintances what they would type into a search engine to find your web site and add these to your list.

Now go to a big search engine like www.google.co.uk or www.yahoo.co.uk and type in one or two of the words from your list. Make a note of the top rated sites. Pay particular attention to those whose URL’s (domain names) keep cropping up near the top, and which words or phrases you used to get them there.

Now look at the words you used to reach the top listed sites, select these as your initial keyword list.

Prioritize this list. Put the most descriptive words at the top of the list. Remember that you can use short phrases as keywords too. In fact, it’s the use of 2-3 word phrases that really locks in a high ranking for specific queries. Keywords should also appear in the text used in your web site.

Pair off the less significant words at the bottom of your list. There are no hard and fast rules as to how long your keyword list should be, but try to keep it around 256 characters or less. That would be an average of 30 words. You don’t have to have that many keywords, but get at least 10.

Your description should be once again about 30 words. Representing a factual and accurate account of the content of your web site. Incorporating some of your keywords in your description is an advantage and also ensuring that similar text appears on your web site’s pages will also show your site is genuine to the search engines. Other Factors

Submitting your site manually to the big search engines is a more effective way of becoming registered. The big search engines might try to block automated

submission, but this is a successful method for registering with the smaller search engines. Being registered with numerous search engines is an advantage as you never know what source your viewers will be using. Age matters, a site with equivalent relevance to yours will be placed ahead of yours if it was registered or spidered first. There is nothing you can do about this except to try to increase your relevance and hope the other site goes away.

Your relevance to your subject increases as other sites link to you. The idea is that if a lot of pages link to you, you must be a pretty big and relevant site. So, get reciprocal links! When the pages linking to you are spidered, it adds to the relevance of your page.

There is no brief way to approach optimizing your web site for search engine placement. The basic approach is to develop a prioritized list of keywords. Ensuring that these keywords are liberally deployed in the text over your web pages.

Trying to trick search engines is not an option, as search engines are sophisticated enough to spot these and are quicker to scrap your pages from their database than they are at including them.

Optimization should be taken seriously and even when your site is up and running and registered with search engines, you should undertake to review the situation regularly and check whether your keywords are placing you high enough in the listings.

Some of the biggest search engines for you to explore are Google, Yahoo, Ask, AltaVista, AOL NetFind, MSN, Excite, Hotbot, Lycos, WebCrawler and WhatUseek.