Unfortunately, glory days of search engine placement are long gone and it is getting harder by day to get a good position.

If you want to be found nowadays you are going to have to be far more canny – and probably lucky too.

The first step is to make sure that your site works correctly, with no missing links, images or other nasties. Then you need to make sure that all your pages have “Title” tags. These generate wording that appears in blue bar at top of Internet Explorer and also appear in returned listings when you run a search.

A title tag like “Welcome to Mish Mash Communications” is all well and good, but it doesn’t really contain any real search terms. That is, if someone is searching for “Mish Mash Communications” you will probably be found, but a title like “Mish Mash Communications – experts in corporate communications strategy” is better and richer in keywords.

In fact, “keyword rich” copy is secret to a good search engine placement. Make a list of 20-30 search terms that you think people might use to find your site and then make sure those terms appear towards top of copy on your pages. You can spread them across a number of pages, but as long as keywords appear in title tag and towards top of page you will stand a better chance of being found.

The jury is out on importance of Meta Tags nowadays. These are invisible keywords and descriptions that have to be added to your pages. They used to be used by search engines to index your pages, but are no longer seen as relevant.

Once your pages are ready fun starts. The first search engine worth registering with that is still free is Google. First, check that your site isn’t already registered by putting full URL into Google’s search box. If it isn’t you can submit URL at http://www.google.com/addurl.html. Google says that you only need to add index page as its spiders crawl rest of site automatically. In my experience this doesn’t always work, so it is best to add each relevant page.

The Internet offers instant access to millions of documents on countless topics. It consists of a variety of access protocols that include e-mail, FTP, HTTP, Telnet and Usenet news. Many of these protocols feature programs that allow users to search for and retrieve material made available by protocol.

One of most efficient methods of conducting research on Internet is to use World Wide Web. Some of most effective ways to tap into this resource include visiting individual Websites, exploring subject directories and using search engines.

Individual Websites If you know Internet address of a site you want to visit, you can use a Web browser, such as Internet Explorer, to access site directly. Just type Uniform Resource Locator (URL) or Web address into your browser window to pull up site.

If you don’t know address, make an educated guess. Web addresses of companies are often formatted as www.companyname.com (e.g., www.microsoft.com). University web addresses are typically formatted as www.universityname or acronym.edu (e.g., www.ilstu.edu or www.iwu.edu). Likewise, government agency addresses are typically formatted as www.agency name acronym.gov (e.g., www.hud.gov or www.doj.gov). Subject Directories Increasingly, universities, libraries, companies, organizations, and even volunteers are creating subject directories to catalog parts of Internet. Directories are organized by topic and consist of links to Internet resources relating to a wide variety of areas. They are useful for researching general subjects, topics that need exploring, and for browsing.