Table of Contents / Search Engine Optimization for Dummies

Table of Contents

Introduction..................................................................1

About This Book...............................................................................................1

Foolish Assumptions .......................................................................................2

How This Book Is Organized ...........................................................................3

Part I: Search Engine Basics..................................................................3

Part II: Building Search-Engine-Friendly Sites .....................................3

Part III: Adding Your Site to the Indexes and Directories..................4

Part IV: After You’ve Submitted Your Site ...........................................4

Part V: The Part of Tens.........................................................................4

Appendix .................................................................................................4

Icons Used in This Book ..................................................................................5

Part I: Search Engine Basics ..........................................7

Chapter 1: Surveying the Search Engine Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9

Investigating Search Engines and Directories ............................................10

Search indexes or search engines......................................................10

Search directories ................................................................................11

Non-spidered indexes ..........................................................................12

Pay-per-click systems ..........................................................................13

Keeping the terms straight..................................................................13

Why bother with search engines. ......................................................14

Where Do People Search. ............................................................................15

Search Engine Magic ......................................................................................19

How do they do it. ...............................................................................20

Stepping into the programmers’ shoes .............................................20

Gathering Your Tools.....................................................................................21

Search toolbars.....................................................................................22

Alexa toolbar .........................................................................................24

Chapter 2: Your One-Hour Search-Engine-Friendly Web

Site Makeover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25

Is Your Site Indexed. ......................................................................................25

Google ....................................................................................................26

Yahoo! and MSN ....................................................................................27

Yahoo! Directory...................................................................................28

Open Directory Project........................................................................29

Taking Action if You’re Not Listed................................................................29

Is your site invisible. ...........................................................................29

Unreadable navigation .........................................................................30

Dealing with dynamic pages ...............................................................30