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Here is how you tell the World About Your Page
Now you've got your web page all done, you've tested and validated it, and you're ready to let the world know you're on the WWW. All of the major search engines (Yahoo, Alta Vista, Lycos, etc.) allow you to submit your web page for listing in their databases. Typically, when you're visiting one of these search engines, you'll see an icon or link that says either ADD YOUR URL or SUBMIT YOUR URL. Click on that, and you'll be able to submit your URL and a brief description of your page. Or, choose a URL submission site that can do the work for you.
Search engines index web pages in different ways. Most of them will index the TITLE of your page (see the The Basic Page page on how to use TITLE). Still others index the first paragraph or so, while some index the whole page.
Some search engines index pages based on information you provide with META tags in the HEAD section of your page. For those search engines that index pages in this manner, the following is an example of what you might include in your HEAD section:
<HEAD>
<TITLE>HTML Interest Group --- Submitting your page to Search Engines</TITLE>
<META NAME="author" CONTENT="your name and e-mail address">
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="put a description of your page here">
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="place important keywords defining your page here">
</HEAD>
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Leave what follows NAME as it is, but change what follows CONTENT to whatever is appropriate for your page. For a "real world" example of META tags, view the source code of this page by selecting File, View Source.
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You can maximize the chances of people finding your page through a search engine by doing the following:
- Include a TITLE in the HEAD section of your page
- Describe your page in the first few sentences
- Include the META tags mentioned above in the HEAD section
- Sprinkle important key words throughout the text of your page
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NOTE: When adding/submitting your page to a search engine, be prepared to wait for it to be listed. Some search engines only take a few days, while others can take weeks. In some cases, you will receive an e-mail saying that your submission has been accepted, in others you won't receive any notice and you'll have to keep checking back to see if you've been listed.
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