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Your website's built ... now what?
Getting listed in Search Engines
This might seem overwhelming, but if you take time to understand how and why to do this, it is truly worthwhile.
I recommend a fantastic website called SelfPromotion.com, where you can sign up and submit your website to many search engines at once. It's FREE. You will need to have information ready before you do this, such as knowing the Title for each webpage, the Description and the Keywords. Further down the page I show you how to make these changes on your website, but before you do that, check out SelfPromotion.com and read all you can - I love this site, and have been using it and recommending it for years.
When you've learnt about keywords etc and have tweaked your site, and you're ready to sign up and look at submitting your site to search engines, click on the Create New Account link in the coloured box on the right of each page.
And while you're there, read some of the articles and try out the tools.
PS - If you really find this all too overwhelming and would rather I do this for you, please let me know.
Setting up information for each webpage for the Search Engines
One your website is online, there are a few more steps you need to take to make sure people can find you in the Search Engines.
Let's look at a website:
You need to create a TITLE for each webpage, come up with a paragraph [description] about each page, and to type in keywords and phrases [meta tags] for each page.
Login to your website
You will be taken to the Page Manager:
Click on the button for General Settings page.
You will see a list of Options, click on the Optimize button:
You will see a new page with all your web pages listed down the left hand side:
TITLE is the first column
The text you type in here will appear at the top of that particular page in the browser window, here is an example of Titles from several pages on this website:
Be creative, use some keywords, your company name, product or service, but something which makes this page unique when seen in a list with the other pages.
DESCRIPTION is the second column
When you do a search on search engines, and you get results, those few lines describing each website are called the DESCRIPTION. It doesn't appear on the webpage, but is written in html "behind the scenes". Here's a sample:
If someone did a search for keywords related to your kind of website, and ten of your pages appeared in the search engine results, what would YOU like to see as a description for each page, so the person searching will pick *your* DESCRIPTION and come visit YOUR site?
You'll be able to type up these descriptions and tweak them till you're happy with them, before you start building your website. You can type the descriptions into the document you can download from this page.
Is your brain hurting yet? Haha, I hope not! Even though it might seem overwhelming, it really is very, very important to plan *how* your website appears on search engines, and whether or not it will entice web visitors to click on the links for your website, rather than the others in the search results.
See how important all this is? Good, I'm glad you understand.
KEYWORDS is the third column
What are keywords? Let's think about this for a minute ... when you go to a search engine, what do you type? Did you know the words you type to search with are known as keywords? It is these words which help search engines find pages which match the words typed by someone searching online.OK, so let's think about this. If people type keywords into a search engine, wouldn't it be a good idea to have those same keywords on your website? Now it's difficult to put ALL the keywords on any one of your pages, so these keywords are "behind the scenes" in the HTML of your web pages.
I'd like you start thinking of all the words and phrases you might type to find YOUR website when it's online. Now I'd like you to start thinking of all the words and phrases a total stranger might type to find YOUR website when it's online. Hmm, the list got longer, didn't it?
[Note: many people believe keywords are no longer necessary, and they're right - some search engines don't use them anymore, but other search engines DO, so let's help them as much as we can!]
[TIP: also put down plural words and phrases.]
When you've finished with this page, click on the Submit button. You can always come back here to make changes.
So, if you've added your titles, descriptions and keywords, and you have submitted your website to the search engines, it is now a *waiting game*. It can take some time, weeks and even months, for some search engines, so you need to be patient.
You may hear about search engine submission sites where you pay for someone to list your website with zillions of search engines - and of course sometimes you get what you pay for! The majority of these just take your money for little or no results.
There are Search Engine Optimisation services, who can also help - for a fee.
It all depends on how much you are willing to spend, and whether or not that particular service is a good investment. Do lots of research before making your decisions.
Good luck with your new website!