Achieving a high position in search engines requires smartly designed Web pages, patience, and persistence. If that doesn’t work for only $49.99 we can also arrange a consultation with a Voodoo witch doctor .

All kidding aside...if getting search engine results was as simple as casting a spell and chopping the heads off a few chickens, everybody would do it. However there’s only so many top spots for every search and potentially thousands of companies want to be listed first.

The developers behind the search engines have a vested interest in producing accurate search results. Their goal is to serve up the best Web sites for whatever information the Web surfers are searching for. If the search engine consistently provides the surfer with good results, the surfer is likely to continue using the same search engine. The more times surfers use an Alta Vista or a Hotbot the more revenue the developers make from those little ad banners.

When developing your Web site you need to think about what your potential customer is going to type into a search engine to find your product. Think hard on what search phrases people are likely to use to find your product. We’ve put together a few tips to keep in mind while you’re developing your site and then we describe how to list your site on the World Wide Web.

Define Keywords. Keywords or key phrases are what you imagine a customer would use to search for your product. Make lists of keywords and then combine them into two or three word phrases. Write your keywords down in order of their importance.

Use Meta Tags. These are where the keywords are placed in the HTML of your Web page. These are hidden from the Web surfers view but are seen by the search engine robots and used to index your Web site.

Use Title Tags. These are the titles of each page and they appear at the top of the browser window when someone is visiting your page. Use your most important keyword phrase in your title.

Headlines. If your body copy uses headline tags, make them out of your keyword phrases.

Body Text. Use your most important keywords in the body text. Of course remember that the text will have to read well for the human visitors that browse your site.

Don’t Use Frames. Well, you can use them if you add extra code for the search engine robots. However, without the additional effort the search engines don’t know how to follow the links from frames and you may only get your home page indexed.

Add Your Site to the Search Engines.

• Develop your Web site and upload it to your server.

• Visit the search engines on the web and look for a link that reads Add URL or Add Site, when you click on the link you usually have to add your e-mail address and the address of your Web site, sometimes they ask a few more questions but nothing too tough.

• The search engine then spiders your Web site. What this means is the search engine program runs another program called a spider or robot that looks at your Web site. The search engine then indexes the information it has gathered from you site into a database. This database is what the search engine searches when the surfer types in his search words.

Don’t expect search engine results overnight, the search engine databases are currently averaging between two days and six weeks to add new Web sites.

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