Unit 5: Site Submission

Procedures

In the words of Mark Amerika's recent exhibit at the Whitney museum -" I link therefore I am"! The World Wide Web is composed of billions of web sites and everyone with access to an internet server has publishing rights, but submitting your site is only part of the process. Alta Vista receives 20,000 sites per day - the majority of which are SPAM. Before you submit your site you should take steps to insure that your site is discovered by a search tool and take steps to improve your site's retrieval rank within a search tool.

Meta Tags
Meta Tags can best described as verbal identifiers inserted into the Keyword and Description sections of the html coding behind your web page. Web page creators insert these important words with the hopes that search tool spiders will retrieve and index their site within the search tool database.

Locating meta tags is as easy as finding Edit on the browser tool bar, select View, select page source or page. The page that appears is the HTML coding behind the web page. If you look at the top of the page you will see meta name "Keywords" or meta name "description" content . Observe the words used to describe the site; they should accurately describe the content. Spammers often add extra unrelated words just to make their sites appear in results much to the aggravation of serious searchers. The increasing sophistication of search engines has reduced the number of false hits. Try a few examples:

Elden Street Players

League of Women Voters

PETA

Avoid the Void: Quick and Easy Site Submission Strategies
http://www.onlinemag.net/OL2000/sullivan5.html
Danny Sullivan Online May 2000

META Tagging for Search Engines
http://www.wdvl.com/Search/Meta/Tag.html
Alan Richmond

Meta Tags Target Your Pages
William Robert Stanek. PC Magazine July 1, 1999 Proxy required

Design and Content
LBR110 is directed more toward finding the most relevant and quality content and less toward the specifics of web site design, but as a web site designer or avid internet searcher you need to find and review site designs from other sites offering content of interest to you. You should be familiar with how sites have changed through the years to maintain popularity with users. The Way Back Machine provides the Internet's first attempt at archiving itself.

Once you find good sites try the links to feature offered by Google, HotBot, and AlltheWeb to locate other sites that have linked to the one you identified. For example, you found the following site about the Navajo code talkers of World War II and you want to know if other sites link to it. Try Google's Find pages that link to feature found in advanced search. Copy the URL you are tracking into the search box and you will find all the sites that link to your original selection. It is not fool proof or a guarantee of quality, but it is one way to find related sites.

Web site designers can use the links to feature as a web portfolio when working with clients. Take the URL of a site that you created and paste it into links to URL search option. Hopefully you can demonstrate that many other sites link to the site you created.

Search Engine Method
Many search engines invite users to add their URL or submit their site. Some search tools charge for submission so be sure to read the fine print. Site submission links are usually found at the bottom of the search tool home page.

Excite http://www.excite.com/info/add_url
Hotbot http://hotbot.lycos.com/addurl.asp

Commercial Software
Naturally, products are marketed and sold to guarantee your site's ranking at the top of search tool results. Use they products carefully because there are no guarantees that a commercial product will insure better ranking that your own skillful coding and description.

SubmitIt! http://www.submit-it.com/

WebPosition Gold http://www.positionsoftware.com/

Web Sites
SearchEngine Watch - http://www.searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/index.html
The guru of Search Tools offers his highly prized suggestions, based on years of experience.

SPAM - a conscious attempt to mislead searchers by including keywords in META TAGS that falsely describe your site. Not a good practice and usually results in searcher dissatisfaction.

For information contact jegan@nvcc.edu
August 24, 2002