need help! with metatags and search engine

[T-Quilter]

I'm having trouble getting traffic to my site. I've tried adding a bunch of different meta tags my website in hopes that the site will show up in search engines. Am I missing something here? I'm pretty new to web stuff so I dunno...
Am I supposed to get ads from google? AH! I'm so confused...how is everyone else doing this??

[Young Spark]

Excuse me as I am quite new to this but the answer to getting in the search engines is: time.

Thats right, time is what you'll need. Here is what I mean T. Using meta tags is a start, but just having META tags on your page WON'T get you in the search engines. First off, after you get the META tags, you have to go to the search engines and submit your page. That way the search engine spiders will know to "crawl" your site. I know your probably thinking its a hard thing, so if it is, you could always rely on "bulk submission." Like, find a software that allows you to submit your site to all the search engines at once. This is faster.

BUT, BEFORE ALL THAT: you need to do some keyword searching and analyzing. This is the most hardest part of search engine optimization. After you done the keyword search and all of that, you need to optimize your actual page for search engine friendlyness.

I could go on and on and on, but what the hell, I might as well just give a simple link (which I should've done in the first place.)

Go to the Search Engine Guide --- that'll teach you the basics. Or go to SEO Book

[transburgh]

Changing the meta tags will not push much traffic. It can take from 6 to 18 months for SEO to get you at the top of the rankings and that depends on how stiff the competition is.

If you want to get traffic to your site you need to take part in some grassroots marketing. Go to forums that your site would be relevant to the users and have your link in the signature and be an active user. Try to get bloggers that are relevant to your site to give it a review or recommended it to their readers.

You have to remember that you can do all the marketing in the world but if your site or product is not quality the buzz and traffic will only be temporary.

[BOG]

I'm having trouble getting traffic to my site. I've tried adding a bunch of different meta tags my website in hopes that the site will show up in search engines. Am I missing something here? I'm pretty new to web stuff so I dunno...
Am I supposed to get ads from google? AH! I'm so confused...how is everyone else doing this??

Traffic comes from the seach engine spiders picking up good quality content on your site. Your particular site does not really have any content, and on top of that it's made from Flash which the spiders don't like. Even with lots of good, quality content it can take a year for things to start to pick up.

You're site looks great, but it's just not ideal for SEO.

[Aletheides]

Pick a keyword and craft a 500 word article around it. Drop the keyword in your titles and meta tags. Track keyword positions with rnk1.com

[Young Spark]

Here are some more tips for you.

Changing the meta tags will not push much traffic. It can take from 6 to 18 months for SEO to get you at the top of the rankings and that depends on how stiff the competition is.

Not necessarily true, if you pay "paid inclusion", you have a better chance of ranking higher in search engines quicker. Or so I read somewhere. Think about Yahoo Search Marketing, their PPC (or Sponsored Ads) gets you listed in the top of the search results, bottom section and side section. These are "Sponsored Links" section.

Some tips for marketing would be:

a. Comment Blogs - Don't SPAM comment these blogs, just find one's your interested in and have relevance to your page
b. Forums - Become interactive in some forums and (if allowed) post your link in your signature
c. EMail Marketing - I read online that 60% of people who visit your site and subscribe to your newsletter or email will have a higher chance of returning to your site. Start an email campaign
d. Directories - Submit to some directories. Many require reciprocal links (meaning you link back to them) --- But a majority of them can provide you some kind of traffic
e. Link Exchange - Exchange links with websites that are of relevancy to you

NOW, about getting better search engine rankings, here is advice I learned so far:

First off, analyze the keywords for your website. Rule of thumb that I figure is easy is to find keywords that have a small STR ratio. That is Search To Results ratio. If you search a keyword that has a monthly search volume of 5,000 and only provides 800,000 indexed sites, that is a keyword worth keeping as its more likely you'll make it to the top.

Next, don't flood your pages with repeating your keywords, just integrate your keywords into your content. AND WHATEVER YOU DO... DO NOT use "hidden" text, if a search engine catches this, you'll be booted out.

I also suggest setting your title to something with your keyword(s) in it. The search engines will base the topic of your site off the title bar.

That's all I can give right now. IN SHORT, I'd highly recommend you check into keywords a bit, but believe it or not, search engines don't really use your keywords as a major algorithm anymore. Apparently resulting from SPAM abuse of it, so they mainly look at quality backlinks to your site from quality pages and the relation of the content on your page.

All in all, best of luck.

[T-Quilter]

thanks everyone! that was really helpful!