Creating a website is one thing. Getting it listed in search engines and getting a high ranking is quite a different thing. There are many ways to do this, for example by optimizing the design, the code and the content. Here are a few tips specifically aimed at optimizing the content on your website.

How does a search engine work?
A search engine collects internet content by "crawling" (browsing) websites using a so-called spider. The content found is saved in the search engine's database and ordered by relevance. An internet user looking for content using the search engine is actually searching this database.

If you want people to find your website, you will have to make sure your website's content ends up in the search engine's database. This can be done by getting your website listed and by optimizing your website content.

How do you get listed?
You can simply submit your website to a search engine. You can use the following link, for example, to submit your website to Google: http://www.google.com/addurl/. It can take a while, however, before your site is actually crawled by the search engine and submitting your website is no guarantee that it will actually be listed.

If you have access to your website's statistics, you can usually check whether your website has been crawled; depending on the statistics software used, there may be a separate heading for search engine spiders that have visited your website. Look for names such as Googlebot (Google), Inktomi (Yahoo) and MSNbot (MSN).

How can you optimize your website content?
The following tips will help you optimize your website content for search engines:

• Enter the search terms with which you want your website to be found as meta keywords (using the <META NAME="keywords"> tag). Be creative: try to imagine which terms a potential client might use when looking for your services. This could be your languages and the subjects in which you specialise, even your location. Don't forget to include synonyms and variant spellings. And include all terms in all the languages you use.
• Using the meta keywords is not enough, however. In fact, many search engines don't even use them anymore. This is because in the past, some website owners would enter all sorts of popular keywords as meta keywords on their website just to get a high ranking, even if these keywords had nothing to do with the content of their site. Therefore, you should also make sure you use the search terms you find important in the content of your website, preferably as much as possible.
• Some parts of the content are considered more important by search engines than others, so using a keyword in those parts will rank it higher. The URL of your website is the most important part, so getting a domain name which includes your most important keyword can be very helpful. Other important parts are the browser title bar (the <TITLE> tag), the headings (<H1>, <H2>, <H3>, etc) and emphasized text (<EM> and <STRONG> tags).
• The name you enter on the <TITLE> tag is shown by most search engines as the title of your website in their search results. So make sure this title clearly summarises what your website is about.
• Many search engines (but not all of them) show the text entered as meta description (using the <META NAME="description"> tag) as a description of your site in their search results. Make sure this meta description contains your most important keywords as well.
• Make sure other sites link to your site. The more links to your site are found by the search engine, the higher the ranking. Entering your website in your ProZ.com profile is the first step.

It goes without saying that the quality of your website content is always more important than optimizing it. So don't start adding keywords or links just for the sake of optimization if this results in illegible texts. After all, it's not much use to have your website ranked high on Google when visitors don't even stop to read the content.