Meta Tags/spiders-wtf?? How To Get On Search Engines

IHI

How does one go about getting your site to be listed when key words are typed in search engines and such. I'm an absolute idiot when it comes to this so looking for help.

I've been doing reading online, so say meta tags others say meta tags are dead. either way I still have no idea how to incorporate them to better my chances for showing up on real search engines.

been reading and reading, am now beyond frazzled/info overload so looking for somebody to hold my hand on this one

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George Z

Do you really need a new carreer as an SEO professional
or do you want to stick to contracting.
My experience:
After spending more time trying to figure everything out
than I spent contracting, I decided to hire a professional.
My accountant does my books, my insurance broker my insurance,
my mechanic fixes the vans, the printer......etc. etc.
We now have an IT person taking care of almost everything.
Do you think I want to know about MySQL or anything like that?
Apparently my new website will be easy to add on, update, change etc.
and very well optimized for the price of changing a radiator and
a water pump in the van. What a bargain! I can stick to contracting now.
Results? We have been first page for all the popular search terms
for over a year now in all three search engines. The leads have been
coming non stop lately, I can't even service them or hire fast enough.
That's with this current website I don't even like.
Could I do that myself? maybe, but at what cost to my business or sanity?
Our SEO person is worth her weight in gold.
Be careful though, most SEO people try to trick the search engines
for quick results. It only works for a bit, then you are screwed.
AA Paint is raving about his website, it is very nice for not a lot of money.
I don't know what results he is getting with search engines but his site
is optimized as well.
Maybe ask Humble what results he is getting with his,
it's been up for a while now. Footbridge has done a nice job for both of them.

My point: get a professional and stick to contracting

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IHI

I hear ya George, but now that I'm taking a break from racing, this will be the first time in 12yrs I am going to try any real advertising/promotion so I'm taking baby steps right now. My small contracting/word of mouth has always been enough to afford my hobby/passion, pay the bills, and have blow money but I'm going to concentrate on growing the business now, based on racing expenses per yr I will have a rather large advertisng budget/business reinvestment funds once '06 season gets in full swing. In fact was just looking over charts from the past 4yrs and all swing the same way with these first 3 months being very slow, then towards middle of march it slowly builds into April where it sky rockets and platues during summer months.

I figure at the moment I have time to play around with this stuff so I'm just trying to get as learned up as I can since at current time I am still living on winter hybernation funds until we pick back up and free up some money for larger/better advertising fees.

Been doing more research than I care to admit on every aspect I intend to implement this year so once we have a green light it's full speed ahead and hopefully everything will work as I hope and increased/steady growth will begin. Been growing every year little by little, but as I have said to the wife, think I'm stuck in a rut with the word of mouth. Sure it keeps me busy and makes me money, but folks tend to socilaize with like personalities and it is'nt too often low to mid incomes hob knob and have any real clout/impact on folks that have looser wallets descions making that can afford to do the work I want to, instead of small budgets dicatating every aspect.

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Grumpy

I like Goerge Z's advice, but it's good that you have been doing the research since when you hire your seo person you won't be completely blind to what he/she is discussing with you.

I have achieved top ranking in yahoo (chicago roofing & chicago gutters). I used to be top in google also, but then google changed their algorithym and became very easy for the spammers to trick. Plus I feel theyy add too much weight to incoming links and not enough to page relivance. I can't even find my sites in google any more. MSN is pretty good to me as well. During their beta I was #1. I have dropped some

realpurty2

I agree with hiring a professional, but until then, you can try a free program called WebCEO. It has good reviews. I just got it and didn't mess around with it much yet until I get the new website completed.

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carlspackler

Firstly, make sure your html is correct. I know for a fact that Google will hate you if they can't get through your headers and tags in the right order. Run your pages through this...

validator.w3.org(can't post links I guess until I have more posts)

It will show any errors in html and how to correct them.

Next is content. Make sure you have plenty of buzz words in your text. The top search engines read your text. Meta tags are hog wash as that's what spammers use to try to fool search engines.

Your Title words are gold. Make sure the Title on each page in your site is different AND relevant to the page.

Lastly are links. Relevant links. Find other sites in your field that will link to you and you can do the same for them. It's a lot of work, but in the end it pays off.

It takes time (sometimes months) to get identified in some search engines. MSN and Yahoo are a breeze as long as you have relevant text content. Google is a little more difficult...especially if you're competing with 100's of other sites like yours in different states.

Always Greener

here try this http://www.scrubtheweb.com/abs/builder.html

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cutnroller

IHI,

Some good points already made on this thread and I have a little to add.

Knowing a thing or two about web development and specializing in SEO i can say that it does take time. I don't think you can play that game and run a business at the same time (unless the business practically runs itself). One of the two will suffer for sure.

It's good though to do some research so that (as grumpy said) you can speak the language to some degree and get along better with whoever you hire to do it. Judging from where you are at now, my advice is spend the dough (not much when you consider the payoff) and get the job done right.

If you still want to try it yourself post a question (the more specific the better) and I will do my best to help you out, as I'm sure many others will.

The list of do's and don'ts is very long, so I can't really give a complete or concise explanation to address your original question here. I do feel your pain though, just realize that it takes a lot of work to make that pain go away if you choose to do it yourself.

MKECONTRACTOR

Pay the less than $10.00 bucks a month for Yahoo local enhanced listing. I pay like $7.00 a month and am listed number 2 for garage builders in my area. Google local is free, and I just signed up for paid listing with them. The paid listing is a few cents for everytime someone clicks on my ad. I will let you know how it works in a few weeks!

dayspring

Even a site that has been optimized will take time. Make sure you have no SEO cheats or the spider will ban your site. However, no matter what you spend, it takes time to get high rankings.

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