Thankyou for your detailed reply, it will be very helpful. Wow you get 20,000 hits and have never submitted to a search engigne or used meta tags! that is very impressive- when you say its all about content would it be safe to say- the more content i have the faster i will come up on searches or as you said is it just being patient as the site will be found eventually by search engines (how does this happen by the way?)
Also (although apparently in the wrong place) some of my meta tags are words which are not mentioned on my actual site- you mention this can and eventually will affect my ranking on search engines- how is this please?
Wow you get 20,000 hits and have never submitted to a search engigne or used meta tags!
My main web site (k7mem.com) has a rather narrow focus. And, some pages are more popular than others. To help see how your site is progressing, it's a good idea to have a good "stat" counter. I use a free service from AddFreeStats.com. I don't actually display a hit counter. Most users find that kind of thing obnoxious. But the stats tell you everything you need to know about your visitors. Where they are from, what pages they viewed, how long they stayed, and much much more. You can use this information to rework pages that think are important, but don't seem to be very popular.
But, a good ranking didn't happen over night. It took several months for my site to start showing up. But once it got noticed, and other users started linking back to it, the ranking started to go up. I find my site referenced in dozens of blogs and forums, that also relate to my site. Many of the blogs and forums are in languages that I don't understand. That site is also included in several publications. Again, publications that are related to the site.
when you say its all about content would it be safe to say- the more content i have the faster i will come up on searches or as you said is it just being patient as the site will be found eventually by search engines (how does this happen by the way?)
No, having a lot of content does not speed up the process. Search engines crawl the web looking at old sites, for new material, and looking for new sites. You just have to be patient. If you want to speed up your search engine presence, have your site linked to by other sites. Preferably, other sites that are similar to yours or cover similar material.
You are also a major source for the search engines. Search engines regularly scan popular forums, like this one. That's why you get forum spammers, like the one who posted May 26, in this forum. They make it sound like a legitimate post. But all they want to do is get their web site listed, so the search engines will pick up on it. Sometimes they get visibility from visitors that are just curious. Bravenet isn't very good at deleting these things, unless someone complains directly about it.
So it is important to ALWAYS include the URL to your web site. You don't need a email address. That will only get you lots of spam. But your web site URL is important. Include it in everything you do on the net.
Also (although apparently in the wrong place) some of my meta tags are words which are not mentioned on my actual site- you mention this can and eventually will affect my ranking on search engines- how is this please?
Initially, search engines depended on meta tags to profile a web site and index it for searches. But many web sites have abused the meta tag so much, that search engines do not put a lot of weight on meta tags any more. There are many search engines that completely ignore them. One or two words in a meta tag that is not listed on your site, will not be a problem. But repeating keywords and using keywords that have nothing to do with your site, will be a problem. Search engines look for something called "keyword stuffing". A good example of how to get banned from Google for "keyword stuffing" is highlighted at this site, mattcutts.com/blog/avoid-keyword-stuffing. And it shows that , "keyword stuffing" can be accomplished with meta tags and can be hidden in the body structure. A google search on "keyword stuffing" will give you lots of information.
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