Resources and recommended Web Services:

Check out these resources to make your site Search Engine friendly and increase traffic.

1. Sites to help you build your site

2. Set up meta tags for good ranking in search engines

3. Submit your site to search engines and directories

4. Promote your site!

5. Software and Web Services - buy on line and save!

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1. Sites to Help You Build and Promote Your Site

It is important to have a well-designed site in order to get and keep your visitors and increase traffic and, therefore, sales. Here we list sites that will help you with HTML and in building your site in general. In general you will want to stay away from using frames and keep your graphics minimal for better rankings in search engines.

Introduction to HTML
HTML Code Tutorial
The Barebones Guide to HTML
A Beginner's Guide to HTML
Hotwired's Web Monkey
Web Diner
Great Website Design Tips
Free animations and graphics
Helen's free background images
www.mals-e.com - Free e-commerce service with shopping cart.

Free Website Templates - TemplatesBox.com offers free website templates, free photoshop web templates, free abstract images, free wallpapers and much more resources.

DesignFirms.org - Design Directory
Find design firms, design services, freelance designers, web hosting and more. Get a free design estimate. Search by location, search for designers by state.

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2. Meta Tags

Make sure you have meta tags and your title in place before you submit to search engines to ensure better rankings. While meta tags will not ensure a No. 1 ranking in the search engines (and some search engines ignore them altogether), it is a good idea to try to help the search engines that do use them to index your site and give you a better ranking. You want to have a short title that describes your site's content. The sites below will help you set up your meta tags. Meta tags basically consist of two parts: keywords and a description. You will want to choose keywords and a short description that are relevant to your site's content. Keywords that you want to emphasize can be repeated twice in the meta tag keywords; if you repeat keywords more than twice, however, your listing may be rejected.

Try to make your main page as search engine friendly as possible in order to help get a better ranking. The more the search engine finds relevant words on your site, the better ranking you will get. You may want to work the targeted keywords in bold/large imprint into the copy on the comment page itself. You can also put keywords in the alt tags of your images and in comment areas. Make sure your HTML is accurate, your page does not take too long to load, your links are working, and you stick to your targeted subject. To get an idea of what words you may want to use for your area, do a search on the keywords you want to target and see what the top sites have used. Then click through to those sites and view their source code. The more specific the keywords and focus and the more relevant they are to your site's content, the more likely you will be to get a higher ranking in the search engines.

Sites to Help You with Meta Tags

Here are some sites that will help you make your meta tags and get better rankings.

Vancouver Webpages -- makes your tags for you. (advanced)
Search Engine Watch -- tips on meta tags and search engine guidelines.
Web Site Garage -- helps you tune up for web site promotion.

KeywordDiscovery.com Keyword Research Tool

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3. Search Engines

Free Search Engine Optimization
Search engine placement is critical to your success! We can help!
Trellian SEO Toolkit v2.0 Do it your self Search Engine Optimization. Trellian SEO Toolkit
Keyword Discovery The ultimate keyword research tool Keyword Research Tool
Competitive Intelligence Find out what your competitors are doing. Trellian Competitive Intelligence

Search engine listings are important to drive traffic to your site, and each search engine and directory works in a different way. To get better results make sure you have your title and meta tags in place. You can sometimes submit more than one page from a site (see the tips in each search engine).

Major Search Engines and Directories

Submit your URL to the following sites so that others can find it. It is best to submit to each of these by hand.

Lycos
HotBot
WebCrawler
Submitit
Yahoo
AltaVista
LookSmart

LookDirectory.com- Comprehensive Human-Edited Web Directory
Sarasotalinks.com - Local Directory, Sarasota FL.

Search with scrubby...

Kartoo is a different kind of search engine. Kartoo displays query results and presents them in a visual way. Kartoo queries multiple search engines, and uses the popular Flash plug-in to display the results.

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4. Help You Promote Your Site

Promote your site here!

Search engine placement is critical to your success! We can help!

Press releases have been one of the most powerful forms of advertising and marketing that
money can't even buy!
Banana Website Marketing Secrets - Learn how to get top placement on
the search engines using ANY keyword.

Newsletters

An email newsletter about your site keeps your visitors coming back. Let those who sign up know when you make changes or have special features on your site. You can get free email lists from the following:

Findmail -- start your own email list for free.
Onelist - yahoo

Banner and Link Exchanges

Generate traffic by putting links and banners on your site in exchange for links on other sites.

Create website exposure by exchanging text-based ads with Txtswap

Link Exchange -- free banner exchanges.

Hyperbanner

Exchange It!

Web Rings

People who are interested in your topic will be able to find your site through the ring.

WebRing -- join a ring of sites like yours for free.

Yahoo's list of web rings