Ten Ton Dreamweaver [Electronic resources]

Geoff Blake

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Preparing Your Site for Search Engines

Those who are new to web design always seem eager to add their site to as many search engines as possible, as soon as possible. While certainly adding your site to the search engines is a good idea, hitting all the major search engines is very labor intensive. Savvy marketers know this and prey on the naïve by offering services that bulk submit web sites to all the search engines. However, paying to have your site bulk submitted is usually not worth the cost.

Paying to have your site bulk submitted to all the search engines is usually not worth the cost.

A much better approach is to manually add your site to search engines because you'll then have direct control over the descriptions and other information that the engine asks for. Most search engines provide a way to add your site to their databases. You may need to do a little hunting, but you'll usually find a link that says something like "Suggest a Site" or "Add a Site." Each search engine also will want slightly different information about your site.

Then the big question: How many search engines do you submit your site to? Some marketers feel that a site should be added to as many search engines as possible, while others argue that only the top 10 search engines really matter. The truth is, nobody knows for sure. It all comes down to you. Do you mind sitting in front of your computer for a day or so manually submitting your site to every search engine you can find, or are you happy with just hitting the biggies?

So how many search engines should you submit to? Lots of folks say as many as possible, but with so many, that might interrupt your sleeping patterns. Instead, sticking with the biggies, like Ask Jeeves, Web Crawler, and Yahoo, should be just fine.

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Search engines use a site's keyword and description metadata to identify and categorize your site.

Before you submit your site to the search engines, you'll need to insert metadata into your Dreamweaver pages. A page's metadata, which is stored in the page's <head></head> tag pair, is the information that search engines use to identify and categorize your site. You can enter two types of metadata: keywords and a description.

Keywords are words or phrases that describe your site. For example, if you had a fan site dedicated to the movie The Matrix, your keywords might include Neo, The Matrix, Wachowski brothers, Morpheous, and Trinity. Usually, you start with very specific keywords and work your way toward the more vague.

A site's description is a paragraph detailing the contents of the site. So in our Matrix fan site example, the description might read, "An online network of Matrix fans sharing ideas and theories related to the Matrix trilogy. Read about The Matrix comic books and video games and the philosophy behind the world of The Matrix."

Noteworthy

Search engine spiders thrive on <head></head> tag content, so make sure to take the time to thoughtfully construct your metadata.

Mega Meta Do's and Don'ts

The techniques marketers use to place high in search rankings are always changing. I'm suggesting that you play with a clean nose and avoid some of the shadier search engine trickerywhich, by the way, most search engines are on to. If a search engine runs into any of these shady techniques, odds are it will treat your site as spam and drop you from its index.

Do It!

Don't Even Think of It!

Use carefully selected keywords and a well-written description.

Repeat the same content over and over in your keywords and descriptions.

Make sure you use a descriptive page title.

Repeat the same word a zillion times in your page title.

Set up lots of links into and out of your pages, especially links to external sites.

Find out what the most popular keywords are (Viagra anyone?) and insert them into your keywords list.

Place keywords directly within your page content, and use descriptive alt tags on images.

Repeat the same keyword over and over at the bottom of your page, with the text color set to the same color as your page's background.

Here's how to set up your site for search engines:

Open the page that you want to add metadata to.

You can add metadata only to your site's opening index page, or you can add metadata to all the pages in your site.

To add keywords to your page, choose Insert > HTML > Head Tags > Keywords.

In the Keywords dialog box that appears, type the keywords that you want to insert in your page, separated by commas; then click OK.

Dreamweaver adds the keywords to your page in the background code.

To add a description to your page, choose Insert > HTML > Head Tags > Description.

In the Description dialog box that appears, enter your site's description; then click OK.

The description is added to your page's background code.

Save your page and upload it to your remote site.

You're now ready to add your site to the search engines. In this example, you'll add your site to Google.

Launch your browser and navigate to [www.google.com].

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On the main Google page, click About Google.

On the page that appears, under the For Site Owners heading, click Submit Your Content to Google.

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On the next page that appears, click Add Your URL to Google's Index.

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On the page that appears, follow the on screen instructions to submit your site.

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To add your site to other search engines, you'll follow a similar process. When you open the search engine in your browser, look for an Add a Site link (or something similar). Keep in mind that some search engines allow you to submit your site for free, while others charge a listing fee.

After you've submitted your site, it may take a long time for your site to show up in the search engine. Don't be surprised if it takes six months or longer. Bummer? Yup. But the major search engines are so inundated with requests to add sites that they have a difficult time keeping up.

Getting Obsessive About Site Ranking

Some site owners are downright obsessive about having their sites rank high in search results. Their thirst to be at the top of the list drives them to endlessly tinker with page content and metadata until they figure out how a particular search engine is categorizing their pages.

But is this obsession with attaining higher and higher search placement necessary? Are search engines the only way to generate traffic on your site? Of course not. Here are a few things to think about:

Surprisingly, most web surfers don't know how to search! Most surfers use search criteria so broad and unspecific that the odds of your page turning up are something close to a shot in the dark.

What about your competitors for those coveted first few ranking positions? Everyone with a site similar to yours is trying to do the exact same thing you are, and the number of sites being added to search engines daily is enormous. The search engines can't keep up with demand.

Consider the type of site you have. Let's say you run a local deli. You want a web site so customers can view upcoming specials, place large orders, and view a calendar of upcoming events. But do you need to add your site to a worldwide search engine like Google? Why would someone in southern Italy be interested in your small deli? You're just cluttering up major search engines with content that isn't useful to most surfers. What makes more sense is to add the site to a local online community directory.

This is not to say that you shouldn't add your site to the major search engines, assuming it's suited to an international audience. Go for it. Just don't spend too much time on it, and don't expect to see your site added by the end of the business day.

Imminent Doom

Using shady search ranking techniques, like loading your page content with repeated keywords, is a sure way to get your site dumped from the search engines. These techniques are considered spamming.

Just the Gist

Getting Ready to Publish Your Site

Dreamweaver's Link Checker makes it easy to test all the links in your site. Choose Site > Check Links Sitewide.

To fix a broken link, click it in the Results panel; then use the folder button to specify a new hyperlink destination.

You can use the Files panel to keep your site organized. Drag files to move them. Click files to rename them. Press Delete to delete selected files.

Reports are useful for gathering information about the files in your site. Choose Site > Reports; then select the type of report you want to run.

Publishing Your Site

To publish your site, connect to your remote web space by clicking the Connects to Remote Host button at the top of the Files panel.

To upload the whole site, select your site's local site folder; then click the Put File(s) button. To upload individual files, select them in your local site and either drag them to the remote site or use the Put Files(s) button.

Maintaining Your Site

To update hyperlink destinations across your site, choose Site > Change Link Sitewide.

When uploading content to your remote site, you can tell Dreamweaver to ignore certain files or folders by cloaking them; choose Site > Cloaking > Cloak.

Synchronizing ensures that the local and remote sites are exact duplicates. Dreamweaver compares the local and remote sites and transfers any files that need to be updated.

Many of the functions that you can perform on your local site in the Files panel can also be performed on a remote site in the Files panel. However, when you move or rename a file in your remote site, Dreamweaver will not update hyperlinks automatically for you.

To remove a site from its live web space, select the remote site folder at the top of the file list and press Delete.

Working with a Team

Use Design Notes on your own or within a design team to attach notes to your files that indicate their status, deadline, edits, and so on.

The ability to check files in and out ensures that team members won't overwrite each other's work. Select Enable Check In and Check Out in the Remote Info category of the site's Site Definition dialog box.

Preparing Your Site for Search Engines

Search engines use your site's keywords and descriptionits metadatato index your site. To insert metadata, choose Insert > HTML > Head Tags and then choose Keywords or Description.

Adding your site to the search engines is a good idea, but it does not guarantee high traffic.