Was surfing the web trying to find ways to get help to fine tune website..and landed here some how :>)
After registering..I am realizing that I am an Oldie...certainly not in my teens..tho bet most know more than I..thinking I should not be here.
my concerns.. I am trying to straighten out is with my website...created by "moi"
I like the looks of my site..however most importantly is ..the search engines and what I can do to improve what I have...to be picked up and hopefully ranked eventually higher than what I am...which is in the deep six..and needed others to brain storm this with. This may not be the place...but if anyone knows a forum where I can be able to get some help I would appreciate it. I have done the tuts and everything else..however not enough.
Need to get things straightened out.
THANKS for your time. A lovely place...warm and friendly/cozy
Have a fun day

many search engines will not list a site unless it has its own domain name... "yourname.com" or whatever. being on a personal space site, that makes it one step tougher to get listed.

have you visited the various different search engines? most have a link such as... "Add URL" or whatever. unless they know you exist, they cannot add you.

you are good in having a descriptive title, keywords, and description meta tags. that is a big help in listing.

one thing that may help is links. do many sites link to yours? perhaps do some link exchanges.

being listed at any particular spot in a search engine is rather difficult to figure out. it really comes down to relavance. what words are being entered during a search? how many other thousands of sites would be under that type of catagory? its really hard to be a bit unique in such a crowd.

good luck!

I have a registered domain name...and a redirect..so my customers use my dot com to reach me. I have submitted to search engines however was advised to use my true site addy.

A forum friend did a optoomized report on my web site...and there are several things that were pointed out by that software program that I would like to correct..however DUH...I am brain dead with this stuff.
Its a long list..and do not know where to start..
ONE thing that comes to mind...my keywords...I need to add more...and alot of the keywords I used do not have enough density. In my travels, I found a site that one could put a keyword in...and it would tell how good that keyword was..and NOW I can not find that site. Boggling my brains is..that I have gone to similar websites..and looked at the view source of their site..hahahaha...and their keywords were very little..so who knows.

Another issue for me..is how I designed my site..which I really like...however 1st is the name - I do have a slideshow with java script...then html goes to links on the left side for my other pages...and then TO THE MAIN PART of my page...and worried that its far in for the search engines to grab.
But then I see other webpages have even more..before getting into the body of their page. Who knows.

Do you know if counters...block search engines..the freebie ones..like I used thru andale?

Also...would LOVE my own search engine on my site for customers. Looks today..and it said the ones you create your own...one would have to make sure their webserver allows cgi something...????Have no clue how to know that..

Perhaps you are right and its that I have not a real domain url...yet the company where I got my registered domain name and the redirect said...it was aokay...that was not a big prob??
Hate moving...been with AOL for years and its a free site...and no time to change things.

Its hard to find other sites to exchange links with. All would be in high competition and I know none of them.
Whine whine whine..LOL. Think I will just do the best I can and resubmit to the search engines...and x my fingers.
THANKS for your help..and listening