There are a few other things to watch out for to avoid having your pages excluded from engines. The following are things that make an engine tag a particular page as spam and therefore not index it. Make sure that none of your pages has any of these.

1. Keyword stuffing. This is repeated use of a word to increase its frequency on a page. Search engines have ability to analyze a page and determine whether frequency is above a "normal" level in proportion to rest of words in document.

2. Invisible text. Some webmasters stuff keywords at bottom of a page and make their text color same as that of page background. This is also detectable by engines.

3. Tiny text. Same as invisible text but with tiny, illegible text.

4. Page redirects. Some engines, especially Infoseek, do not like pages that take user to another page without his or her intervention, e.g. using META refresh tags, cgi scripts, Java, JavaScript, or server side techniques. If you use redirection, it should have a delay of about 7 seconds.

5. META tags stuffing. Do not repeat your keywords in META tags more than 1 to 3 times, and do not use keywords that are unrelated to content of your site.

6. Do not submit same page more than once on same day to same search engine.

7. Do not submit virtually identical pages, i.e. do not simply duplicate a web page, give copies different file names, and submit them all. That will be interpreted as an attempt to flood engine.

Below are several useful facts and tips for each major search engine that you can use to improve your search engine marketing.

- AltaVista (www.altavista.com) Facts

Pages in index in millions: 150 Time it takes to index a submitted page: 1-2 days Time it takes to index crawled pages (may take longer than indicated): 1 day to 1 month How to check if your page is on index: In search box, type: '+url: yourcompany.com/yourpage.htm'. How to check how many pages link to your site: In search box, type: 'link:yourcompany.com'. You can narrow your search to a particular directory or page like: 'link:yourcompany.com/ourpage.htm'. To eliminate from results all pages within your own domain that link to each other, use -url command like: 'link:yourcompany.com -url:yourcompany.com' Supports frame pages: Yes Supports image maps: Yes

- HotBot (www.hotbot.com) Facts

Pages in index in millions: 110 Time it takes to index a submitted page: 2 days to 2 weeks Time it takes to index crawled pages (may take longer than indicated): About 2 weeks How to check if your page is on index: Select advanced search options and enter your page's URL. How to check how many pages link to your site: In search box, type: 'linkdomain:yourcompany.com'. To eliminate from results all pages within your own domain that link to each other, use -domain command like: 'linkdomain:yourcompany.com -domain:yourcompany.com'. These methods get you all pages linking to your domain. To find links to only a particular page, enter your URL into search box, then choose "links to this URL" option. Supports frame pages: No Supports image maps: No

- Infoseek (www.infoseek.com) Facts

Pages in index in millions: 75 Time it takes to index a submitted page: 1 day for pages submitted online, 7 days for email submissions. Time it takes to index crawled pages (may take longer than indicated): Rarely spiders, if it does then 1 - 2 months How to check if your page is on index: In search box, type: 'URL: http://www.yourcompany.com/page.htm'. How to check how many pages link to your site: In search box, type: 'link:yourcompany.com'. You can narrow your search to a particular directory or page like: 'link:yourcompany.com/ourpage.htm'. To eliminate from results all pages within your own domain that link to each other, use -url command like: 'link:yourcompany.com -url:yourcompany.com' Supports frame pages: No Supports image maps: Yes

- Excite (www.excite.com) Facts

Pages in index in millions: 55 Time it takes to index a submitted page: About 2 weeks Time it takes to index crawled pages (may take longer than indicated): Up to 6 weeks How to check if your page is on index: In search box, type in full URL of page. How to check how many pages link to your site: N/A Supports frame pages: No Supports image maps: No

- Lycos (www.lycos.com) Facts

Pages in index in millions: 50 Time it takes to index a submitted page: 2-4 weeks Time it takes to index crawled pages (may take longer than indicated): 2-4 weeks How to check if your page is on index: Not available. How to check how many pages link to your site: N/A Supports frame pages: No (limited) Supports image maps: No

- Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com) Facts

Yahoo is most popular directory on web. Many people have problems getting their site listed. A rough estimate is that only 1 out of every 10 submissions gets listed, if that. Moreover, it takes an estimated 4 to 15 weeks to be listed for those who actually get listed! Those who got listed had to resubmit their site an estimated 4 times over several weeks or months before getting listed (resubmitting too often is spamming, by way). One this is for sure - you must get into Yahoo! For some sites, Yahoo actually brings them over 50% of their business. By way, Yahoo now has an express submission service whereby you pay $199 for a response to your submission within 7 weeks. It doesn't guarantee that you will be listed with them, but at least you get to know within 7 days whether you are in or if not, why. Here is a set of links that you need to visit to learn how to successfully get into Yahoo.

http://help.yahoo.com/help/search/url/ http://howto.yahoo.com/chapters/10/1.html http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/9903-yahoo.html

Excite also seems to drop pages in subdirectories, favoring those pages in root directory. It is highly recommend that you have your doorways and most other pages in root directory (that's where your home page is) and make sure you have your own domain name. If you cannot do that, get a separate domain name and hosting account just for your doorways (even better!) so that you can have them in root directory.

Tip: Lycos

Nothing much new hear but one small tip. The best way to get into Lycos is to submit your site to Lycos as usual AND submit to www.dmoz.org, Open Directory Project that Lycos and many other engines use as a source of results on certain searches. Lycos also uses FAST engine for some of its results so you should also submit your site to FAST engine (at www.alltheweb.com.)

Tip: Hotbot

Hotbot is still mysteriously dropping pages off their index for no apparent reason. Other than that, they are doing fine. Here is a tip from www.searchengine-news.com. Their newsletter said that fastest way to get indexed by Hotbot at moment is to submit to Canada.com at http://canada.com/search/web/addurl.asp. Try it! You should also submit to www.dmoz.org, Open Directory Project, which Hotbot uses.

Hotbot is also first engine to index dynamic pages (pages created on fly from a database or CGI script). To have your dynamic pages indexed, if you have any, simply submit your dynamic page with all arguments added onto URL (e.g. www.mysite.com/page.asp?catalog=5369&state=florida) or submit a static page with a bunch of dynamic URLs you need indexed.

Note: AltaVista "Too many URLs problem"

AltaVista recently installed an ultra-tight and aggressive spam filter which according to numerous reports is causing a very large problem to thousands of web site owners. The spam filter is often improperly tagging many pages as spam. The good news is that your site is not dropped off their index if you do get tagged, but offending pages are given low ranking and you are blocked from submitting any new ones. So it isn't a very grave situation and especially because way too many webmasters have been affected unfairly this situation will likely get better soon. For most webmasters, simply avoiding known spam techniques such as hidden text etc and abstaining from submitting more than one page a day at most should keep you clear off their spam filter. If you feel you have been cut off from new submissions unfairly, simply use AltaVista's feedback form and let them know and they will put you back up.

Tip: DirectHit, LookSmart and Open Directory Project submissions

Several search engines such as HotBot and Lycos use DirectHit and Open Directory Project as a major source of their search results. It has been found advantageous, for this reason, to also submit your site directly to DirectHit at http://www.directhit.com/util/addurl.html as this gets you a better position much faster because DirectHit updates its engine much more timely than engines that use it such as Lycos and Hotbot. You should also submit to www.dmoz.org, Open Directory Project, as this is only way to get into certain results served by an increasing number of search engines (over 20 major search engines and directories use it). LookSmart is also being used by a very large number of search engines and directories so be sure to submit there too at www.looksmart.com.

Suggestion: Automatic submission tools plus getting listed on as many places as possible

Automatic submission tool (software or web based) are extremely useful and timesaving when it comes to submitting your site to several hundred search engines and directories. By all means, use them. But make sure that you do not use them for Infoseek and AltaVista if you are submitting more than just one page. These two engines have high-speed submission detection that can get your submitted page penalized. How this works is that they watch for more than one submission per, say, 30 minutes from any one site. So if you submit two pages from your site to Infoseek or AltaVista in less than 30 minutes, that's not good for you.

On other hand, you should use these tools and get yourself listed on as many places on web as possible - directories, search engines, free-for-all link pages, About.com, etc. It is very important, especially for Infoseek rankings, that you have as many incoming links into your site from other sites as possible, especially from larger sites such as Yahoo and About.com.

Final Note: Delayed index updates

Most of major engines are now taking between 30 and 90 days to refresh their databases, although their information pages claim shorter periods than that. What this means is that a page you submit today and any pages on your site linked from it will appear on search results in 30 to 90 days. Excite is especially slow. The Internet community believes that this situation will definitely change because no engine wants to have old information in its database - its bad customer service to its users. So they will work at correcting these delays.

This is a time of great opportunity, and marketing your site through search engines is one of world's greatest advertising opportunities. Where else can you reach such vast numbers of people worldwide at practically no cost to you? So it does pay to keep a close tab on engines and use them wisely but ethically to your advantage.

If you need any more information on this topic, please see Additional Resources section at http://www.positionweaver.com.