A search engine can be a Web site’s best friend. A listing near the top of Yahoo or Google could bring more eyeballs to your site than e-mail, banner ads, print media, and even television ads. And the best part is, search engines don’t cost you a dime.
That being said, getting your listing to the top, where it’s most likely to be seen, is not easy. You need to understand search engines’ idiosyncratic ways of registering sites. You need to know how to hardwire your own site to make it show up when they comb the Net for targets. You need to understand when and why competitors outrank you.
Maintaining a top search listing as thousands of new Web sites hit the Net every week is like clambering up a hill that keeps getting steeper. To keep your site from tumbling to the bottom, we’ve pulled together our best stuff on search engine optimization.