Posting your website online is relatively easy. Cobble together some HTML, upload it to your host's server, and you're in business. Many Internet providers offer web-hosting, blogs, and discussion boards, with templates set out in an easy, cookie-cutter fashion. With this ease of access to web publishing, it is no surprise that millions of people and organizations are online. With the exploding body of online content, it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd.

As soon as you begin your web publishing venture, the next step is to ensure that your site is indexed by the search engines, and hopefully ranked well by them. Soon, hordes of curious net surfers and potential clients will be pouring in to your site, right? But before that happens, Internet users must be able to easily find your site based on searches using terms that they might associate with what your site is about. Ideally, you want those searches to display your site at or near the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) for key search terms. The most informative or useful website or blog in the world is meaningless if nobody can find it. Conversely, having your site indexed and ranked highly by the major search engines will do no good if the people who visit your site find it user-unfriendly or lacking in substance. Thus, your site needs to be both machine-friendly and human-friendly. However, you should direct your site design towards human visitors; that is, to make it easy for visitors to use and navigate through. Do this well, and the search engines will find it and rank it. You should always design with an eye toward people, not machines.

There are largely two ways that visitors will seek out your website via search engine: 1. they already know about your organization; or 2. they don't know about your organization but are looking for a specific product, service, or piece of information that yours may provide.

In the first scenario, they merely search for the organization's name. If, for example, the site is for your law firm, Dewey, Cheatham & Howe, in Minneapolis, a search for "dewey cheatham howe" will likely turn up your site in the SERPs, if the site is indexed by the search engine. Getting this kind of traffic is a fairly easy goal for a site owner; the mere fact that it has been indexed allows this to happen. These visitors are like the proverbial bird in the hand in terms of Internet navigation, since they already know about your firm and they are making an effort to seek it out specifically. The second scenario is the more difficult one to target. There are many law firms out there, and lots of them in Minneapolis. There are probably lots of law firms in Minneapolis that practice in any given area of law. So when someone who doesn't know that your firm exists conducts a search for a law firm (or a certain type of law firm) in Minneapolis, will they find your site among the numerous other players?

Adapting websites for search engine friendliness is known as "search engine optimization" (SEO). There are many individuals and firms that perform SEO services, often commanding lofty fees. As with any profession, there are some good ones and some bad ones. Before you spend your money on these services, you should consider many of the site-promotion activities that you can perform yourself -- for free. There are a number of basic things you can do to enhance the effectiveness of your site without spending a lot of your valuable time, and certainly without cost. I will assume that you are already well-versed in web design, or have such resources available; thus, this article won't be a primer in web design techniques and HTML coding. There lots of good courses and books available on that subject.

Here are a few tips to help you optimize the accessability of your site:

Metatags: Metatags don't carry the same weight that they used to and they are not a magic bullet. Nevertheless, metatags can contribute somewhat to your site's success and should not be overlooked. Be sure to have tags that are well thought out and inserted in the code of each of your site's pages. Include a good, brief, meaningful title tag, as search engine spiders or crawlers look for this. More importantly, your human visitors will see the title tag in the top bar of their browser, and it also becomes the title listing when it is bookmarked in their browsers. Far too many sites have left in the default "index.html" or "home page" in the title, which is meaningless. The HTML editing program you use might not insert the metatags you want. Use a text editor (e.g., Notepad) to view your source code and to create the desired tags. The title tag should be no more than about 60-80 characters in length.

The description tag is also important, as this can help set your site apart from similar sites in the search results. Not all search engines utilize the description tag (Google doesn't), but some of the other search engines will index this tag. It should be a brief sentence or sentence fragment that includes words to identify your organization, its mission, products, services, etc. As its name implies, it should be descriptive of what your site offers. Unique identifying terms, such as your trademarks and trade names and slogans should always be incorporated into your description tag, but don't stuff the tag with too many. Keep the description tag to a maximum of about 200-250 characters in length, as the search engines will truncate any excess. The terms used in your title and description metatags should also appear in the body of text on the site. Describing the site as one thing and rendering it as something different is considered a "black hat" trick, and can result in your site being derated or even delisted by search engines.

Keywords: In the mid-1990s, before the advent of more sophisticted search engines, keywords played a major role in the indexing and ranking of web sites. Search engines would apply a "brute force" search for these defining keywords to turn up a particular site. Website owners quickly exploited this, resulting in a proliferation of sites stuffed with hundreds or even thousands of keywords (keyword spamming), all hoping to snag the attention of web surfers searching for particular terms. Due to these unscrupulous practices, search tools quickly evolved to where they greatly devalued the importance of keywords. Today, keywords are no longer a significant factor (Google ignores them entirely), though some search engines still give them a small amount of weight. Place no more than a few dozen relevant terms and don't repeat the same words (you can repeat with plurals and tenses). Keywords are a good place to put in common misspellings, acronyms, synonyms, and jargon that may help bring in some traffic from people searching with related, but more obscure keywords. By all means, avoid keyword spamming. Search engines (particularly Google) will dampen or even de-list sites that engage in this practice.

Inbound links: These are very important, and one of the most effective ways to boost rankings. To the search engines, inbound links are "votes" for a site's relevance and importance. Engage in natural link exchanges with other sites that are related to yours, preferably sites with high rankings. Be very judicious in this process, and avoid link exchanges with so-called link farms and scraper sites, websites with little or no real content whose sole purpose is to direct traffic to their clients' sites and generate ad revenue. Instead, contact the webmasters at companies you do business with and offer to place links to their sites on your page, in return for their reciprocation. Do the same with trade/professional associations and business groups that you belong to. Submit your site with the major search engines (i.e., Google, Yahoo, etc.). Submit your site to the DMOZ project. Many online directory sites get their links from DMOZ. You can check inbound links to your site here.

Promote your site's URL in your day-to-day business. Insert a hyperlink in the signature file of your outbound emails. If you contribute to discussion boards on topics relating to your organization's business, add a link to your sig file there, if the board allows them. Many of those discussion boards are indexed, and your links there will be followed by search engine spiders. Avoid the temptation to "spam" unrelated discussion boards or blogs in a cheap attempt to place links. Forum administrators can spot spam postings a mile away and will delete the postings, and possibly banish you from the site. Have your site's URL printed on your business cards, stationery, etc., so that the people you do business with will always have it on hand. Incorporate your site's URL in any other advertising you use, such as newspaper ads, Yellow Pages, etc.

Content: Obviously, you have posted your site online to disseminate some kind of information. It may be as spartan as an "electronic business card," giving only names and contact information. But if you want real traffic to your site, you need to have something that will draw them in and hopefully give them reason to return -- some sort of added value. Write a few articles on related topics of interest, news stories, a how-to piece, or perhaps a frequently asked questions (FAQ) page. Search engines tend to award higher rank to sites with good, organic, text-based content, especially those with a word count of 200 or more per page. Keep the content fresh, relevant, and up-to-date. More than anything, you should strive to incorporate content that people will want to read and refer to others. If it's people-friendly, it will be search engine-friendly.

Make your site easy to read. Select a good font, such as New Roman or Arial, with contrasting colors for text and background. Yellow text on a white background is a really bad idea. Don't try to cram too much information into your home page. Many of your web visitors will have short attention spans. Make sure they can grasp the purpose of your site within a few seconds, or they will be gone. Grab (and keep) their attention by having an uncluttered page that clearly conveys what it is about. Your home page should be the "central switchboard" that sends visitors to your affiliated pages for more in-depth information.

Design layout can influence how effectively the search engines crawl your site. Avoid using frames (now considered archaic and tacky by many web designers), as crawlers are sometimes unable to find their way through all the framed content. The use of dynamic URLs, Javascript links, image maps, and Flash graphics may also adversely affect the indexing ability of search engine bots. If you use an image as a hyperlink, be sure to include a text link near the image. A text link is more readily followed by search engine spiders than a linked image or web button.

Think about users' bandwidth and time: Minimize the amount of flash animation and bulky graphics. These may hamper the ability of the spiders to index your site. They also irritate many web visitors. That slick, 20-second animated splash screen "welcoming" your site's visitors may be a point of pride for you, but it will give your visitors 20 seconds to think about going somewhere else. Unless your site is related to some image-conscious industry, such as entertainment or advertising, that cute flash animation will impress no one other than yourself. Keep in mind that many people still have dialup Internet access. Limit the size of each page to about 200kb or less so that they load quickly on your visitors' browsers. If a page is to include lots of photos, conserve bandwidth by placing small thumbnails on the page, then hyperlink to full-size images off-page. Try to make your site as text-rich as possible. Visitors will find your site by searching for certain terms -- terms that hopefully you have incorporated into your text.

Site maps: The sharpest-looking site in the world is worthless if it doesn't provide any meaningful information. And meaningful information is useless if the visitor cannot easily navigate around your site to find it. Internet users often have short attention spans and will quickly hop from site to site. If they don't find what they are seeking - within seconds - they will be gone. Consider adding a sitemap if your website has more than a few pages. Have a link to it prominently located on the main page. The cross-linking provided on the sitemap will help visitors (and search engine spiders!) navigate through your entire site. Consider using Google's Sitemaps program. This reports your pages (and any subsequent changes) to Google, to help it index and keep all of your site current.

RSS syndication: If you have a weblog or news site with dynamic content, consider setting it up for RSS (rich site summary) feeds. You summarize your site and it is fed to others on the Internet. Interested readers often take that syndicated content and re-post or paraphrase it on their blogs and sites. This creates a "viral" marketing effect and is a good way to increase your site's online visibility and build up incoming links.

Robots: Make sure your robots.txt file allows spiders to access your site and crawl through all of its pages. You can make the robots file as a separate file (robots.txt), or simply insert the code into your HTML. Of course, you can tailor the robots file so that certain private pages are not crawled.

What not to do: Avoid any tricks or deceptive "black hat" SEO techniques. These include keyword spamming, using the same color for both text and background to hide keywords, duplicating pages of your site, cloaking, submitting your site multiple times to search engines, etc. Those tricks may have worked to some degree back in the '90s, but today's search engines are far more sophisticated. They will spot those stunts, and possibly dampen or even de-list your site. Search engine designers know all those tricks.

Put yourself in the web-user's shoes: think about the characteristics and attributes of different sites you respond favorably (and unfavorably) to. Chances are, that's how they will respond as well. The more you are able to empathize with your potential online visitors, the better your site will be. Design toward humans, not machines. If your site has good, relevant, organic content, the search engines will find it, and so will your target audience.

These are but a few suggestions that may enhance your site's rankings. Different search engines employ different metrics, and your mileage may vary. Search engines are not static, and they change constantly. As the search engines evolve and their developers are more prone to applying closely-guarded proprietary algorithms, SEO becomes more a matter of speculation than one of science. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. The best anyone can do is to apply sound marketing techniques and to always keep the web-user in mind.

Be patient - it may take weeks or even months for the search engines to find your site, then even longer for them to bump it up in the rankings. Get the Google Toolbar. It displays the Google Page Rank (1 to 10 scale) of each site you visit. This will help you monitor your site's progress. But don't fixate on the search engines. Develop and continually improve your site, and always keep the site's visitors in mind. If you do it properly, the rest will fall into place.

SEO Tools   A good source of many helpful SEO tools.

Google webmaster help center

Google site submission page

MSN site submission page

Yahoo! Site submission page

DMOZ   Open Directory Project site submission page.

SiteProNews   Sign up for their free email newsletter.

Link Popularity   Determine your site's link popularity and find inbound links.

Web Pages That Suck   How NOT to design a website.

Google Toolbar   Download the free Google Toolbar. Includes a built-in PageRank indicator.

Robots.txt   A tutorial on creating a robots.txt file.

Firefox   Get the free Firefox browser from Mozilla.

Statcounter   Free hit counter and website statistics service.