Sams Teach Yourself HTML 4 in 24 Hours

By Dick Oliver

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • Acknowledgments
  • Tell Us What You Think!
  • Put Your HTML Page Online Today
  • I. Your First Web Page
  • Hour 1. Understanding HTML and XML
  • Hour 2. Create a Web Page Right Now
  • Hour 3. Linking to Other Web Pages
  • Hour 4. Publishing Your HTML Pages
  • II. Web Page Text
  • Hour 5. Text Alignment and Lists
  • Hour 6. Text Formatting and Font Control
  • Hour 7. Email Links and Links Within a Page
  • Hour 8. Creating HTML Forms
  • III. Web Page Graphics
  • Hour 9. Creating Your Own Web Page Graphics
  • Hour 10. Putting Graphics on a Web Page
  • Hour 11. Custom Backgrounds and Colors
  • Hour 12. Creating Animated Graphics
  • IV. Web Page Design
  • Hour 13. Page Design and Layout
  • Hour 14. Graphical Links and Imagemaps
  • Hour 15. Advanced Layout with Tables
  • Hour 16. Using Style Sheets
  • V. Dynamic Web Pages
  • Hour 17. Embedding Multimedia in Web Pages
  • Hour 18. Interactive Pages with Applets and ActiveX
  • Hour 19. Web Page Scripting for Non-Programmers
  • Hour 20. Setting Pages in Motion with Dynamic HTML
  • VI. Building a Web Site
  • Hour 21. Multipage Layout with Frames
  • Hour 22. Organizing and Managing a Web Site
  • Hour 23. Helping People Find Your Web Pages
    • Publicizing Your Web Site
    • Listing Your Pages with the Major Search Sites
    • Providing Hints for Search Engines
    • Loading Another Page Automatically
    • Advanced Header Tags
    • Documenting the Full Address of a Page
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Workshop
  • Hour 24. Planning for the Future of HTML
  • VII. Appendixes
  • A. Readers' Most Frequently Asked Questions
  • B. HTML Learning Resources on the Internet
  • C. Complete HTML 4 Quick Reference
  • D. HTML Character Entities

Listing Your Pages with the Major Search Sites

If you want people to find your pages, you absolutely must submit a request to each of the six major search sites to index your pages. Each of these sites has a form for you to fill out with the address, a brief description of the site, and in some cases a category or list of keywords with which your listing should be associated. These forms are easy to fill out; you can easily do all six of them in an hour with time left over to list yourself at one or two specialized directories you might have found as well. (How did you find the specialized directories? Through the major search sites, of course!)

Even though listing with the major search engines is easy and quick, it can be a bit confusing: Each of them uses different terminology to identify where you should click to register your pages. Table 23.1 may save you some frustration; it includes the address of each major search engine, along with the exact wording of the link you should click to register (as of mid-1999).

Table 23.1. Registering Your Site with a Search Engine

URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, which is just a fancy name for the address of a Web page.

Wait! Before you rush off this minute to submit your listing requests, read the rest of this hour. Otherwise, you'll have a very serious problem, and you will have already lost your best opportunity to solve it.

To see what I mean, imagine this scenario: You publish a page selling automatic cockroach flatteners. I have a roach problem, and I'm allergic to bug spray. I open my laptop, brush the roaches off the keyboard, log on to my favorite search site, and enter cockroach as a search term. The search engine promptly presents me with a list of the first 10 out of 10,254 Internet pages containing the word cockroach. You have submitted your listing request, so you know your page is somewhere on that list.

Did I mention that I'm rich? And did I mention that two roaches are mating on my foot? You even offer same-day delivery in my area. Do you want your page to be number 3 on the list, or number 8,542? Okay, now you understand the problem.

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