Search engine optimization

[Marcus Maximus]

How can i get my page to display when someone searchs for it. i have the meta tags with keywords but it doesn't show up in google..it doesn't even show up if i search for the url

[WebJoel]

META tags are ignored by Google due to abuses of them in the past. Most 'big' search engines don't rely much (or at all) on META data tags. Mostly, I don't even use them myself.

Good content, proper of of semantic markup (using <h> tags for 'section headers' which is like "chapter titles" of a book in that they summarize the section to come), good anchor text (NEVER have a link say "click here" which is, well, intellectually insulting for user-agents and un-indexable to any manner of site-relevance. SEARCH "click here"... you get hits from Microsoft, Adobe, etc etc... not very relevant to the actual anchor you intended).

Good navigation that connects every page to every other page, and use of a "site map" (that is an additional page of 'just links to every available page in the web site', -like a "table of contents" in the front of a book...
Google (and most 'bots), luv 'site maps' because of high keyword density.

"semantic markup' includes not doing 'div-itis markup' whereby every element is wrapped in it's own DIV. I have seen countless examples of a single HEADER tag or a single "<ul>" wrapped in it's own DIV, -for no purpose! Any purpose this 'container DIV' brings to the party, the element itself can do! :) -The DIV is 'to provide padding'? Give the UL a MARGIN and get rid of the DIV. The UL can take a background-color just as effectively as the wrapper-of-UL DIV does... -It's really just that simple.
This div-itis dilutes the keyword strength to have superfluous presentational markup where it is not needed ('a container for everything' is a remainant of TABLE layout..).

I could rave for an hour on the 'things' that help, -but do these and your site will get crawled and indexed.
I have sites that I built just a month or two ago that now using just two or three relevant 'keywords' in SEARCH, comes up 2nd or 3rd on Google & MSN.
I am sure that my SEO-ing is far from super perfect but seeing what IS out there, -most of it is garbage markup and doing *just a few of these suggestions* gets your site noticed and I dare say it, -improves the web experience. -J'ever 'SEARCH' a term and get back a few hundred or thousand 'hits' that have nothing whatsoever to do with the keywords you typed-in? :eek:
Example: -I needed to so some research on "clovis points", -what are commonly referred to as "arrowhead spears"... and among a handful of relevant sites returned, I received 'hits' from a few hundred Britney SPEARS fan-sites! I mean... :cool: Not! Good SEO would help to prevent this.. (and save my stomach in the process possibly) :D

[LeeU]

META tags are ignored by Google due to abuses of them in the past. Most 'big' search engines don't rely much (or at all) on META data tags.
Well, actually that mainly applies to keyword meta tags. The search engines still use the description meta tag for listing the summary of the site on search pages. In fact, it's very important.

They also use robot meta tags (those that follow it) and a few others.