Also, search engine algorithms have become smarter and are now checking that sites contain highly relevant content before including them in their index. If you expect to rank well for a particular keyword or phrase, it’s not too much to expect to find that keyword or phrase within your site is it?

4) Submitting to 1,000 Search Engines

I love this one. I’ve lost count of how many banner ads or web sites I’ve seen boasting "We’ll submit your site to 1,000 search engines!" I can’t believe hype is still prevalent that you need to submit a web site to thousands of search engines in order to receive traffic. This is just NOT TRUE.

In fact, studies show that approximately 90% of search traffic still comes from 10 major U.S. search engines and directories (listed here: http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/List_of_Search_Engines.htm ). Companies that advertise submission to thousands of search engines are usually including in that list minor engines or directories that utilize databases of major engines anyway (so don’t require submission) or a large number of Free For All (FFA) sites. Submitting your site to FFA pages can damage your site’s reputation in search engines, because they consider FFA sites to be of very low quality and utilizing spamdexing techniques in an attempt to falsely inflate a site’s link popularity. I’ve even seen examples of sites being banned from a search engine for having their pages listed on FFA sites by ill-informed webmasters without site owner’s knowledge.

If you are targeting specific geographic markets, you might like to submit your site to most popular regional search engines in those countries, but fact is that most people worldwide continue to use U.S. versions of search engines such as Yahoo and AltaVista despite fact that there are local versions available. The bottom line? Get your site listed on 10 most popular search engines and directories and you will have major worldwide traffic sources covered.

5) Resubmitting Too Soon and Too Often

So you’ve optimized your site and submitted it to most important search engines. But it’s been three weeks and you haven’t received any traffic. Time to resubmit, right? WRONG. Depending on search engine, they can take up to twelve weeks to include your site in their index. Each search engine and directory work to their own time frame. You need to check their average submission times (a chart is here: http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/search_engine_indexing.htm) and be patient.

So when you’re in, what then? You should regularly submit to ensure you’re ranked above your competitors, maybe once a month or once a week, right? WRONG AGAIN. Once you’re in a search engine’s database, there is no need to resubmit your site. It’s pointless actually, because they already know about your site and their robot is scheduled to revisit and reindex all sites in database on a regular basis. Resubmitting wastes everybody’s time and can actually get your URL permanently banned from a search engine for "spamdexing".

The only time you need to resubmit your site to a search engine is if your URL changes or if your domain suddenly drops out of their database entirely. NOT if your ranking drops, NOT if your content changes, but if domain is actually nowhere to be found in index (this can happen from time to time as search engines Spring clean their databases). A good SEO will monitor your rankings regularly (monthly is fine) and only resubmit when absolutely necessary.

So those are five most common SEO mistakes. Any sound familiar? Don’t worry, you’re in good company. Now that you’ve recognized problem areas and are better equipped with correct information, you’ll be able to reverse damage.

No more then a 1,000 characters are advised; however, please remember that each search engine and directory may have their own set of criteria of what is acceptable and what's not. The keywords you include here MUST and should be used throughout that web page to help get a higher ranking in some of search engines.

4.Another TAG, that many don't utilize, is author TAG, yet another place you can insert your keywords. HotBot is one of search engines that will recognize your keywords use in this TAG:

5.HotBot and Inktomi search engines also consider keywords found in your comment TAG:

There are several other TAGS that can be used in you HEAD TAG, but I feel these are most important that will give you a good start.

Now make sure you use END HEAD TAG

Okay, lets put that all together to see what it will look like on your web page:

life you've been dreaming of, clutter free, get an overhall">

TIP: Each page on your web site needs to be given it’s OWN HEAD information.

Editors NOTE: In examples above, anything typed in lower case should be replaced with YOUR title, YOUR description, YOUR keywords, and YOUR author and comment information. In examples above TAGS have been typed in UPPER CASE; however, this is not necessary when entering this information onto your web page. All brackets and other symbols need to be typed in as presented in above examples.

Happy TAGGING and "OverHalling" your site!

One more TIP: Please remember keywords you are using MUST be reflected in page content of page you are trying to improve or build.

Next time, we'll discuss using TAGS and keywords in body of your pages.

The Organizing Wizard, Janet L. Hall, is a Professional Organizer, Speaker, and Author. She is owner of OverHall Consulting, and Organizing By Phone. Subscribe to her FREE organizing newsletter at http://www.overhall.com/newsletter.htm or visit her web site at http://www.overhall.com

Copyright 2001 by OverHall Consulting P.O. Box 263, Port Republic, MD 20676 All Rights Reserved. Permission is granted to reproduce, copy, or distribute so long as article is kept intact, this copyright notice and full information about contacting author is attached.