I would appreciate notification of where it was used, and if possible, a copy of ezine or newsletter that it was used in. Please send notification mailto:webmaster@online-wealth.com

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As more and more businesses come online, fight to get on page one of search results obviously gets more competitive.

In another article, I talked about need for content with "themed relevance", if you want to have even half a chance of getting on page one. You can read that article here: http://online-wealth.com/articles/page_one_blues.htm .

But, getting right content with right theme and a good design is only half battle. In fact, construction of actual web page(s) is *more* important!

Why is that?

Simply stated, if website construction is *not* search engine friendly - and, by that, I mean "spider" friendly - then all efforts to get on page one are in vain. Totally.

To make things crystal clear, by "construction", I mean actual HTML code that is used to show web page(s) on your browser.

As you know, as you surf web, you're presented with what appears to be an infinite variety of web pages. That's *not* true at all: while there is (maybe) an infinite variety of designs and colors, actual HTML coding is common to all. Moreover, there are only a relatively few choices in way that coding is used and compiled.

That means if you develop and compile your HTML code in a way that prevents search engine spiders from reading your pages, then you'll be lucky to have site even included in SE database. Even when it shows up to look your site over.

And you can forget about page one, for sure.

It won't matter if you have a visually appealing site, with great themed content that wins awards...if spiders choke on it, you're history! And, whether you're a multi-national or a Mom & Pop corner store is quite irrelevant also.

So...question is, what stops spiders?

There are five basic aspects:

1. From overall design perspective, avoid pages with frames, splash pages that use Flash, and pages created with WYSIWYG editors.

I would appreciate notification of where it was used, and if possible, a copy of ezine or newsletter that it was used in. Please send notification mailto:webmaster@online-wealth.com

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Not on page one of majors yet?

Elsewhere, I've written about getting on page one of major search engines with an article here: http://online-wealth.com/yahoosuccess.htm and relative ease of actually developing a website to do just that here: http://online-wealth.com/articles/getting_on_page_one.htm .

If process is so easy then, you may ask, why are there so many services touting their ability to "guarantee a top 10 placement" for your website?

The easy answer, of course, is that most people do not know how to go about designing a website that SEs drool over, and have even less knowledge about HTML coding required to display website on web. For a relatively easy approach to site building for yourself - and a fun one at that - go to this link: http://online-wealth.com/buildasite/ where you'll get help you need...and then some!

Of course, there are many services that will do job for you, and obviously, many of them do a good job. But again, if you're gonna do job yourself, you have a lot to think about...

First of all, however, just what do SEs drool about? Well, best phrase I can think of is "a website with themed relevance".

Meaning? Well, suppose you're an expert on sport of baseball, and you want to build a website that ranks in top ten SEs. Most of all, you want to have a site devoted to baseball rules and terminology - a narrow-focus topic, but still having broad appeal and relevance to all baseball players and fans (your target audience, naturally).

Well...a couple of days ago (it's June 18, 2001 today!) a quick search on a few of majors, for search term 'baseball rules and terminology'(the 'and' in phrase isn't required, actually), drew quite a mixed bag, thus :

Altavista: 17,115,664 Google: 8720 Excite: 1,621,610 Lycos: 5728 Northern Light: 6086

Now they were results when I entered above search phrase *without* quotes. When phrase is entered *with* quotes, results are markedly different, thus:

Altavista: Zip Google: 2 Excite: Nada Lycos: 1 Northern Light: 4

*By placing quotes around phrase, I forced SEs to find exact phrase somewhere in their databases.* However, not *one* of SEs returned exact phrase, which means it may not even exist anywhere on web.

Furthermore, when I enter same search phrase in one of meta-search engine (a fancy term that means it searches search engines), I get following:

Ixquick.com - Without quotes: 20,346. With quotes: 1.

And, just so that you know I haven't ignored one and only:

Yahoo.com - Without quotes: 2230. With quotes: 1

So...all of *that* means you have a golden opportunity to be number one in majors, with your baseball rules and terminology site.