Or more precisely, the lack of it. The Internet may still be a new avenue for telling one's corporate story. Trisha Torrey, account supervisor-interactive services at Eric Mower and Associates, said that marketing should be an integral part of initial planning and budgeting when you're preparing to develop a Web presence. Meta tags, Howard said, are but one method. Header tags, words used in the text of the document, and page titles all play important roles.
Some search engines have peculiar quirks that require further tweaking.
Lycos, for instance, looks at all tags. Torrey, who works out of Eric Mower's Syracuse office, said you should make sure your URL is submitted to all the search engines. There are software packages that will submit them en masse, as well as other services that handle this. Another step to take to build traffic to your Web site is to advertise on the Web. For example, if you manufacture electric drills and someone types that term in their search, not only might they see a list of URLs, but also your ad.