You can plan, design, organize and create one of the most effective websites on the net, but if the surfers don't get there, what good is it?

The simple key to generating traffic on any site is to make sure that the search engines and directories see it. If you think about the fact that over 95% of all surfers start their session from a search portal, then you would recognize the fact that searching is the most common way to locate and get to a site. In fact, someone searching for information on a particular topic is much more likely to visit a site as the result of a search than clicking on a
banner, responding to an e-mail, or seeing an advertisement.

I am sure that most of you know the basic differences between search engines and directories. But for those who don't, a search engine is a "program" that goes through the Internet and catalogues sites. The catalogue itself becomes a knowledge base that is used when someone does a search on a particular term. A directory uses people as guides or experts to actually look at a site and "judge" it to be useful or not.

In either case, sites can be registered though "add a site" or "add url" links. The registration sets in motion a process that invites the spider or guide to the site. All of the planning and design I talked about before comes
into play when a guide visits the site. However, when the search engine "spiders" the site, it is not looking for aesthetics or necessarily content, it is looking for the codes that tell it what the page and the site are about.

The main codes (meta tags) that the search spiders look at are comprised of title, description and keywords. Secondary meta tags are headings, alts, and links. Oddly enough, fewer than 30% of the sites indexed use meta tags
correctly. Those that do, generally get top listings and, appropriately, get a lion's share of the traffic because a surfer is much more likely to visit a site in the top five results.

One of my clients handed the task of setting up the codes and submissions to the design firm that knew nothing about searching, tagging or marketing. The primary keyword is one of the top 200 search words used on the Internet, it
also happens to be part of their name and their address. You'd think that they would show up in AltaVista, Excite, AOL, MSN; not a chance. The site is listed in Yahoo, however and that is a very good thing; Yahoo accounts for over 50% of the searches on the Internet.

So, maybe you can plan, organize, and create a great site. But, understanding meta tags will get people to visit it (without a huge advertising budget). In the next installment, I'll go over how to choose the words that will get results.