Getting my website listed in Search Engines

help with listing in search englines

[pigsinpink]

Hi,
I'm the new kid on the block - new to building websites & this forum. I recently put up an ESL site using a guidebook (a site for foreign students wanting to learn English). Unfortunately the book doesn't go beyound building a website.

I want to list my site in search engines some in popular search engines like Google, but more specifically, I want to target the market in Asia. Can you direct me to some articles that can help me to understand this process?

I tried using a free url listing to submit my URL but I don't have a clue what engines they submit to. I can't even find my url in Google or Yahoo. It seems more like a marketing tool then a free & reliable service. Can you recommend a reliable site?

What about Meta-tags? I'm using Dreamweaver MX 2004, can you tell me me how to enable meta-tags (or what articles to read).

Thanks in advance for your help,

[stever]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, pigsinpink.

If you are new to it all, (still) nothing better than the general stuff here:

[webmasterworld.com...]

Then start reading the forums for more detailed areas.

[pigsinpink]

Thanks Stever, the post is great! It'll help alot to get me started on the right track.

Cheers,
Toby

[jfodale]

Use that post as a mantra. I make a point to read it once a month. It's very inspiring and full of spot-on advice, even 4 years old. (wow, 4 years?)

[asknerd]

The best free service around for checking indexed pages is semonitor.net which also offers monitoring for free.

Personally I find SearchEngine Watch a bit overwhelming to understand - sometimes I think the posters are more interested in figuring out the engines then they are actually getting results.

A good site to build links is called rentyourdot.com which provides a free application to build backlinks. We use it on our parked domains and has been quite successful, although I also have concerns about getting blacklisted from the major SE's for spam links. Our strategy has been to run them for about two months and then create real pages that have been successful in getting traffic and deleting the application all together.

Darren.

[edited by: mack at 1:03 pm (utc) on Feb. 19, 2006]
[edit reason] No sig url's please ;-) [/edit]

[mack]

In days gone by the most effective way to get your site listed in se's was to suggest your site directly to the search engines using their add url form.

Now search engines put a lot more emphasis on crawling the web and finding sites and pages as they do so. The most effective way to get your site indexed is to have link pointing to it from as many websites as possible.

Mack.