I just started working on my first webpage.

How do I get it to appear on Google?

I will add the meta description in the html, but is that all I can do?

 

http://www.google.com/addurl.html

 

THANKS!!!!

 

Easy to add your URL to a search engine. Much much more difficult to get a good ranking.

Adding a META description is just a very small part of what you should be doing. There are many more things to take into account.

 

Does it cost money?

 

The way google works is it ranks your site based on how many other websites link to yours. Thus the only real way to "cheat" google is to get other sites to link to you. It is this ranking system google uses that makes it such a popular and effective search engine.

 

Mostly time.... and a good understanding of search engine ranking criteria.

If you have these things at your disposal you can achieve a page one ranking without having to pay for the priviledge.

Search engines occassionally shift the goalposts in an effort to stay a step ahead. I recently heard that any pages on a web site named links.html are now being ignored by Google. Simple solution is to rename your links pages.

Link popularity is just one criteria. It's not the only one. It also depends on your page content, use of keywords, number of words, keyword prominence, ALT tags, page title, links and a whole host of other things.

 

Just like the folks above recommended, try those methods. What you're asking is just the tip of the iceberg. There are people that have done this for years and still can't rank that well (or sustain rankings) because the search engines constantly change. On top of that, the majority of the sites do index but you can't really control the postions all that much unless you do some serious optimization work on the site.

Meta tags, keyword density, linking, doorway pages, etc....

These forums should also lead you to a lot of industry insiders and users from amateur site designers to full blown marketers who do this for a living.

Search Engine Forums
http://www.jimworld.com/apps/webmaster.forums/

WebMaster World
http://www.webmasterworld.com/

 

Doorway pages will actually get you punished if you're not careful. Far better to have extra domain names with a 2 or 3 page site in each IMO.

 

There is so much to know it's almost a science.

1).

Firstly I would suggest starting off with a software package such as WebPosition Pro or similar.

http://www.webposition.com/

This will make a hard task slightly easier but it's still a bit of a learning curve to use. Once you've got your head around this you'll find you can literally write pages that rank well without assistance in future.

2).

Visit the major search engines and read their ranking criteria. Concentrate on Google followed by Yahoo (whom Google supplies now anyway). When submitting to indexes such as LookSmart (as opposed to search engines) bear in mind that a live human may very well review your site and if it's incomplete, lacking content or even contains code errors it may affect your ranking.

3).

Do not oversubmit your pages or submit multiple pages to some search engines. Some will allow it while some will penalise you if you submit too many. Submit one a day to most engines.

4).

Links are good in the right places (not on a page called links.html). By links I mean links on forums, in your sig, other sites and similar. Google is starting to penalise some link exchanges now as their advertisers don't seem to like paying to do what the knowlegable people do for free.

5).

The tips go on and on. If you want more information you'll have to pay me. It takes a long time to learn all this stuff and a lot of time can be spent in implementing it. It's an expensive service due to the time involved and it's also the most overlooked aspect of a web site when it comes to client's budgets. You can tell them and tell them but they just don't listen.

Try this.

Google Keyword search for ...

s2000 accessories

Page 1 / Position 4
www.australia-goldcoast.com/
Honda S2000 Accessories by Muz

Page 1 / Position 10
www.prestigeautoaccessories.com/
S2000 Accessories, Z3 Accessories, Boxster Accessories, Miata ...

Yahoo keyword search for ...

s2000 accessories

Page 1 / Position 3
www.australia-goldcoast.com/
Honda S2000 Accessories by Muz

Page 1 / Position 9
www.prestigeautoaccessories.com/
S2000 Accessories, Z3 Accessories, Boxster Accessories, Miata

Both sites owned by me, both on page one for that keyword search. These rankings may change slightly from day to day.

You can repeat this on other engines to a similar degree but I'm sure you get my point.

Now... if I could just get some spare time to knock those guys from Handa Accessories off the top perch


Oh... and don't go overboard on single keywords or too many keywords. For the most part they are too generic. Concentrate on mostly 2 or 3 word phrases.