Before You Publish Your Site

Here are two examples of the HTML code used for these meta tags. First the AJJF Homepage:

<META name="description" content="The AJJF promotes DanZan Ryu Jujitsu, an effective system of self-defense that incorporates physical and mental training within a philosophy of ethical and moral development.">
<META name="keywords" content="AJJF, jujitsu, jujutsu, judo, ju-jitsu, jui-jitsu, martial arts, massage, Okazaki, grappling, self-defense, Danzan Ryu, DZR">
<META name="distribution" content="global">

<META name="description" content="Kodai No Bushido educates and trains individuals to improve their physical & mental abilities via Danzan-Ryu Jujitsu, martial arts, and physical culture.">
<META name="keywords" content="AJJF, jujitsu, jujutsu, judo, martial arts, massage, Okazaki, Kodai No Bushido, Ternion Academy, Ternion, grappling, self-defense, Danzan-Ryu, DanzanRyu, Danzan, DZR, qigong, chi kong, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, San Jose, Campbell, R.A.D. Systems, RAD Systems, Rape Aggression Defense, rape defense, books, videos">

Page TITLE is the text that appears in the window banner at the top of the web browser when a page is displayed. This should describe the page contents in a concise yet general way (less than 60 characters). It is the TITLE that shows up in peoples bookmarks. Some search engines give more weight to the TITLE words that the words found in the body of the page. The title code for this page looks like this and belongs in the HEAD section along with the meta lines above.

<TITLE>Search Engine Instructions</TITLE>

Optimize to Get the Most from Search Engines

• Get yourself a good domain name. Not surprisingly, URLs containing clear keywords generally perform better than those that appear random or are excessively long. And in addition to getting you higher placement in search results, having its own domain name gives your site added credibility. You'll want to make sure the name you choose logically pertains to the subject matter of your site, isn't too long to remember, and isn't easily misspelled. Use keywords that a crawler will understand, and try to avoid numerals or abbreviations.

• Choose keyword-rich titles for your pages. The [TITLE]; element that appears in your page headers is often used by search engines as the text for their link to your Web site. (As an example, the title of http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/?node=11091801 is "Amazon.com: Musical Instruments.") When you just use "Home Page," your dojo name, or something similarly uninformative, you are missing an opportunity to drive traffic to your site, since search engines weight [TITLE] elements heavily when determining the relevance of a page to a user's search. Therefore, try to make your titles easy to understand and rich in the keywords that your customers will be searching for.

• Add META elements to your site. Make use of description and keyword properties in your headers' META elements. META name="description" content="[a brief description of your site]" is often used by search engines to determine what your site is about. META name="keywords" content="[a list of relevant keywords]" is used less frequently by search engines, but can also help boost your site's relevance in their eyes. In writing a description and choosing keywords, think about how customers will be looking for information on your site, and choose specific terms that will attract traffic. You may want to use research tools like Wordtracker to help you in this. Avoid using the same set of keywords on every page of your site, however--they should be tailored to each page's specific content.

• Content matters. You will also benefit from providing rich content on your site. It is important that you include at least a few paragraphs of copy that is visible to crawlers and full of keywords, which will enable search engines to better classify your pages. Use the keywords you included in your elements, and don't be afraid to use them many times within your copy. But, of course, what you write should make sense and be easy to digest, as readability is vital. You should also display text on your site as text, not as images, which crawlers cannot read. Use tags for pictures you do use, so that crawlers can get some information out of them, and incorporate HTML navigation wherever it is possible, even if this means adding redundant navigation at the bottom of your pages.

• Leverage links. Web sites that are linked to from lots of other sites are often deemed more popular and get a higher ranking in search results. However, more important than the number of links is the quality of those links. Contact owners of other Web sites that score highly for key phrases related to your content, and ask them if they will provide a link back to your site. Make sure, too, that the content on your own site is properly linked together. Crawlers will often start with your home page and then follow links from there to other areas of your site. Therefore, if you fail to provide working links to all your pages, some of your content may end up unindexed.

• Register your site. Once you've built and optimized your Web site, it's best to manually register your site with major search engines, like Yahoo!, Google, the Open Directory Project at DMOZ.org, LookSmart, and Ask Jeeves, or have a partner like Submitnet to do it for you. Registration doesn't take long, but do be careful to follow the instructions provided by each engine, as they are all a little different. Careless mistakes could keep your site from being indexed properly, or at all.

• Avoid pitfalls. Your goal is to increase your search-engine rankings, not to decrease them, but there are some things you can do that will accomplish just that. For example, some search engines don't index dynamic content on framed pages. If this applies to your site, therefore, think about ways to modify it so that it can be more easily indexed, or create alternate, crawler-friendly versions of your pages. Also, keep in mind that many search engines are familiar with common spamming techniques, like hidden text and irrelevant metadata, and will take appropriate action when pages using them are detected in their indexes.

• Be patient. Above all, remember to be patient! There's no magic bullet for getting the top spot in search engine indexes. If you've spent a lot of time optimizing your Web site and you still aren't seeing results, it may not make sense spending more time tweaking it so it will surface higher. There are other ways for you to drive traffic to your site on which your time would be better spent.

Search Engine Instructions

When the web was first starting each webmaster needed to submit their site to each search engine. Currently (1999) all the search engines have powerful spiders that crawl the web (and other search engine trees) to locate new sites. They also verify the existence of old sites. So we no longer need to be pro-active to get the AJJF site listed. If fact, every time a new engine comes on line I check for the AJJF and we are already there.

The AJJF site is listed all over because that are many other sites that point to the AJJF page. Your dojo page will not fall into this category so you will have to tell the world (the search engines) who you are and where to find you.

Submit-It is a site submission service that will notify the primary search engines of your website. I used it before they started charging, if your pay for the service let me know how good and effective it is. http://www.submit-it.com/

The ISP that we use to host the AJJF site provides this form to submit your URLs.

Other Places to List Your Site

• AJJF's Hotlinks page: http://www.ajjf.org/hotlinks.html

• Black Belt Magazine Dojo Directory: http://www.blackbeltmag.com/dojo/

• World Martial Arts Information Center, School Directory: http://www.martialinfo.com

• MartialInfo.com search engine: http://www.martialsearch.com/

• George Arrington's Danzan-Ryu Home Page: http://www.danzan.com/HTML/dojos.html

• Training Halls MA directory: http://www.traininghalls.com

To AJJF Home Page.