Prepare Your Site for Submission to AltaVista

AltaVista's Scooter spider may visit your site only once every few months. Therefore, it's critical that you completely prepare your site before you submit it. Without question, the better you prepare your site, the higher it will rank in the search result listings. The most important steps you need to take to get your site ready are making sure your site is finished and tested, creating keywords and search phrases, and making sure you have used metatags correctly.

Make Sure Your Site Is Finished and Tested
Before you begin attracting customers to your site, you must ensure that it is fully functional, that links are working, and that download times are acceptable. There are many tools that can help you in this process. Some of these tools include HTML validators, link checkers, and metatag generators. Many are available online, and most are either free or come with a free trial evaluation period.

Use HTML validators to check your HTML code for syntax errors. Although both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator tend to overlook many minor errors, certain mistakes can cause a browser to stop responding. When that happens, you frustrate your users, which means no sales and no return visits. Running your code against a validator before launching your site and again after each major upgrade is a great way to ensure that your site is browser-friendly. Here are a few HTML validator sites to check out:

• CSE HTML Validator
• NetMechanic
• W3C HTML Validation Service
• Bobby (a Web-based tool that analyzes Web pages for their accessibility to people with disabilities)

Use link checkers to ensure that your links work correctly. Think back to the last time you clicked on a link and received a "page not found" error message. Readers form quick and lasting impressions about your site and your business when links don't work. Link checkers ensure that your intra- and intersite links work correctly. Here are several online link checkers that you can review:

• Web Site Garage
• webxref
• lvrfy

Make Sure You Have Used Metatags Correctly
AltaVista will index your site according to its metatags. As previously mentioned, metatags are special HTML tags that provide information about your Web page. They provide information about who created the page, how often it is updated, what the page is about, and which keywords represent the page's content.

Copyright © 1995-2000 Pinnacle WebWorkz Inc. All rights reserved. Do notduplicate or redistribute in any form.

« Get more advice every month. Click here to subscribe to Inc. magazine!

Try a RISK-FREE Issue of Inc. Today!

Renew | Contact Us | Current Issue

Select Services