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Vol. 1, No. 14 Some of you would no doubt be horrified to learn that total strangers are visiting your Web site, clicking your buttons, and reading your most private writing. You'd clearly be in the minority, though. Most people are eager to increase traffic to their sites, to turn that Armenian string-cheese site into the PREMIER Armenian string-cheese site. Attracting an audience that's truly interested in your site can be quite a project. We've put together some tips to get you started. Got questions? Be sure to check out past issues in the Handcrafted archives Search engines are by far the most popular way of finding things on the Web. If you want your site to be found by these engines, it's vital that you list it in their databases. The more search engines that index your page, and the higher you are in their rankings, the better. To get your site listed, all you have to do is tell the search engine that it exists. Most search sites have a link like "Submit a URL" or "Add a Page." Click on that, type the address of your site, and submit it. It can take anywhere from a day to a month for your address to show up in search results. This technique is easy enough on a small scale, but it's a bit of a chore to go to every search engine. In response to this trying situation, a few services have popped up that can automatically submit your site to search engines. Some of these are free (JimTools.com, for example) and some are not (like Register-It, for $39.95/year). Unless your whopping advertising budget is burning a hole in your pocket, the free option works perfectly fine. Just type in your URL and JimTools will submit it to 36 search engines. Fill in another brief form, and they'll send your info to 400 human-compiled Web directories. Next, you want to make sure that your rank in a search's results is high. If someone types "Armenian string-cheese" into a search box, you want your site to be the first one that comes up. To accomplish that, you need to let the search engine know what your site is all about. You can do that a few ways. Search engines look at the title of the page, the contents of the page, comments in the source code, and META tags, among other things, to determine what the page is about, which directly affects where it appears in a search's results. Various engines rate these elements differently. You need to make sure that all of these things indicate what your site is about. First, make the title of your page nicely descriptive. Next, create a description META tag. META tags are HTML tags that live in the <HEAD> of a Web page. They do not show up when the page is viewed by a browser, but they do contain information about the page, such as who made it, when, with what tools, and what it's about. This material is read by search engines. The description META tag should contain a brief description of the page. This will be the actual description that appears on a search engine's results page. You should also put this description between comment symbols ("<!--" and "-->") for search engines that ignore META tags. Don't worry, commented text only appears in the source code — just like META tags. The other kind of META tag you should concern yourself with is the keywords tag. You should compile a list of words that will tell a search engine which search words might be used to look for your site. The terms should be relevant to the content of your site. If you had, by chance, an Armenian string-cheese site, the HEAD of your page should look something like this: <HEAD> <TITLE>Armenian String-cheese Appreciation Site</TITLE> <!--Dedicated to Armenian string cheese, the only true string cheese. Loads of pictures, stories, resources, and links. Biggest Armenian string-cheese fan site in the world.--> <META name="description" content="Dedicated to Armenian string cheese, the only true string cheese. Loads of pictures, stories, resources, and links. Biggest Armenian string-cheese fan site in the world."> <META name="keywords" content="armenian string cheese, string cheese, cheese, stringy cheese, cheeses, real string cheese, nigella, nigella seeds, caraway seeds, braided, braided cheese, braided string cheese, cheese appreciation, cheese fan, cheese fans"> </HEAD> You can also put common search terms in the body text, and in your images' ALT tags. Text closer to the beginning of the page is often weighed more heavily than the text located farther down. A gentle note of warning: After years of manipulation by unscrupulous promoters, search engines have become touchy beasts. If they think you're trying to put one over on them, they may penalize you with a low listing, or even ban you altogether. So, it's not a good idea to submit the same site to the same engine numerous times, or to use lots of repetitive or irrelevant keywords. It can also be helpful to register with RealNames. This is a service that associates a distinctive name of your choice with your site in its directory, and automatically produces a link at the top of many search engines (and in some new browsers) when that distinctive name is entered. For instance, a search for "string cheese" at AltaVista would bring up a RealNames link to your site at the top of the results page if you had registered "string cheese" at RealNames.com. T After your site is registered with several search engines, it's up to you and your ingenuity to find additional ways to drive people to your site. A good first step is to surf around to other sites with similar material, and propose a link swap: You'll link to them if they'll link to you. For extra snazz, whip out the graphics editor and make a nice banner or two that other people can put on their sites as a flashy way of linking to you. (This process has been automated by Tripod's SmartAds, BannerExchange.com, LinkExchange.com, and other similar banner-exchange programs.) Check out other promotional opportunities, as well. Get listed in the Cheese Aficionados' Directory. Be resourceful and clever — the best links can come from unlikely places. One big advantage of having a site on Tripod is the Pod system: Your site can be grouped with those of a similar subject matter, which helps people find your site. Plus, you can promote your site at Pod events, on Pod boards, and so forth. You can join as many or as few Pods as you like. Web rings are another relatively new innovation, consisting of virtual rings of interlinked sites with common themes. Check out the listings at WebRing.org to see if there are any rings that your site might fit into, and apply to join them. Start your own Web ring if you can't find one that fits your site. Hit the newsgroups, chat rooms, and bulletin boards, and let people know about your site. Always be circumspect, though. Everyone hates a spammer. Don't advertise your cheese site on the herring-only newsgroup — not unless you're looking for a lot of hate mail. And remember, traffic begets traffic. If you build a good site, people will keep coming back. HINTS, POINTERS, and TIPS o' the TRADE It's a good idea to include some common misspellings of your site's name and keywords in your keywords META tag, particularly if the words are hard to spell. That way, even chronic misspellers will be able to find you. TripodStats can help you keep track of all of your visitors. Find out how many people have visited your site, where they come from, and what stuff they look at while they're there. http://nedstat.tripod.com. A Post-it® Note, gently dragged across the surface of your monitor, is a great way to off clean dust. 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