Meta Tags

ha ha ha, first page of google. good luck with that one. naming a file google search.html does nothing for search engine optimization.

there are some really good sites that have tutorials regarding search engine optimization, but even those seem to change from time to time.

this is how this goes down, SEO

what i can tell you about google and SEO could fill up a thimble, but here goes anyhow.

1 Site Title
2. Meta Keywords
3. Meta Description
4. Site Content
5. alt tags through out on all images
6. incoming and outgoin links (but to sites with PR)
7. Site Content
8. Site Content
9. Site Content
10. Site Content

did i mention site content. and this content must MUST, match your keywords and your description. you need h tags, you need the variants of font across the sites content. google adsense helps get you indexed more frequently, its written that that is not true but i know better. sitemap will help as well, robots.txt helps,

besides all of this, here is what is the most important:

P
A
T
I
E
N
C
E

if you think this is going to happen tomorrow you are mistaken. When i was going SEO work, it was always stipulated that it would take 6 months for results. you also need to read about googles sandbox that google says doesnt exist, but it does. well hope at least some of this has put you on the track in the right direction.


later,
DosDawg

Awww, bless you Dawg...

Good luck getting on the first page. This is very tough. If you have common keywords that everyone else is using such as dating, networking, friends, etc...etc... You're not going to make it to the first page when there are millions of other sites using the same keywords, many of which are probably more popular.

If you don't have a google account get one, especially this one:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Here with this google account you can find out many useful things about your site. Links coming in going out. Your robots.txt file, what google sees, some misc problems, etc.

There is a section in the account for creating a sitemap.xml file. This is a special file you can create that will help google find your links. There are many autogenerators out there that will scan your site and give you a downloadable sitemap.xml to upload to your main directory. This file helps google find all your pages and hopefully index them.

It wont give you a better search result/ranking or anything, but at least it helps google find all your pages, and it will let you know that it has.

If you want to see how many and what pages google actually has indexed for you in the google search box enter:
site:yourdomain.com
or
site:www.yourdomain.com

Try them both because google has a habit of saying these are 2 separate sites/domains or something or other.

Through your domain name out there when you can without going to crazy or overwhelming. If you belong to other fourms that have the signature option in your account add your domain in your signature.

There are some places you can pay for improved rankings, and optimization and such, I honestly never went this route as I was affraid I would be just giving my money away.

I do have google adsense account too. I created a search box adsense feature and I can't say for sure, but it almost seemed like google came along and visited my pages much faster and more often. It could be related to the actual ads, but I figured heck it sure wouldn't hurt any.

the last google update was 2 weeks ago, so you wont see a change now for the next 3 months

Yeah, after that update "Make A Social Network" is PR3! Woot!

Those incoming links DosDawg mentioned are VERY important.. not only to have lots of them but also what the link text says. For instance if you were trying to place high for "dolphin dating" you would try to get people to link to you with that as the link text. A few years ago kids spammed the internet with links to George Bushs homepage and the links all said "miserable failure".. for a short time after that if you googled "miserable failure" Bush's homepage was #1. That is called Google Bombing and they supposedly fixed it, but I can tell you it still plays a BIG role in what your site places highly for :-)

Algorithems are constantly changing, best thing is to stick with natural SEO, keep it simple and genuine.

Act of god

Also, dolphin places the same Meta Title and Description tags in all pages across your site so although this will not stop your pages being indexed by google it is not something that is considered to be "Google friendly"

hi, all very wise words indeed - SEO is a black art.

I am a front page winner... for the word polygonsoup.

In terms of SEO, your question was only half complete - you should be asking to be top for specific search terms - it'll be nice for you, but not very likely that a social network for dog lovers would be top of google for space exploration or deep sea mining. Being 'first page' is a balance of keywords, SEO, marketing and competition - anyone can be first page as I have demonstrated, but only for extremely rear or unique keywords - (google & yahoo are prime examples or these - respectively)... unfortunately unique keywords sledome make sence and the very fact they are unique mean s you need to sell the brand and even then people head direclty to your branded site and by-pass search engines altegerther - when was the last time you search google for yahoo (or nike, coke-cola) - never happens.

This may seam very obvious but you must remember that computers don't really understand 'obvious' they also don't understand fame, sex or cash (their owners may well do though).

The simple truth is that every site owner wants to be top - not just those with the big budgets and smart webmasters working 24/7on this very issue. Even when you are as big as yahoo and google you don't BOTH get to be number 1.

You should think very carefully about your specific and unique selling points are, who your audience is and what your competition are doing rightly & wrongly with their SEO - then implement their successes, learn from their mistakes and and focus on being the biggest fish in your pond and one day you may indeed breach the levy, swim in the ocean and be frontpage news - but fearful of the sharks out there.

Hey google, I'd like an Austin Martin Vanquish to appear in my yard, just by adding a page, can I do that? Seriously, SEO is long and arduous work, but the suggestions above will take you a long way into your goals and education..let us know how you do.

Trial & Error

Yes camp and as DD said you need to add lots of
P A T I E N C E
to the trial & error .....

Hang in there!
.

Thank's all. I'm there now!