As the author of the WWW FAQ, I regularly answer questions about the workings of the Web. If a question is frequently asked, I simply add an article to the FAQ. But sometimes a question is more detailed, more in-depth— not really a FAQ, but still of interest to others. You'll find those questions, with my answers, here in Innards along with commentary on other web-technology-related topics.

Q. I received good info from your website and am trying to implement it into my website. However, when I try to search on google.com using keywords that I embedded in my webpage such as X, Y and Z, my website doesn't show. My website is XYZ. Could you give me some insight?

A. Hoo boy, there are several problems here. So let's just take them one at a time:

1. You are using a <meta keywords="etc, etc, etc,"> element in hopes of making your site come up in search engines when people search for the keywords you have listed. But I don't recommend this at all. That's because search engines have ignored those keywords for more than a decade now. People just fill them with junk that isn't really on the page, in hopes of pumping up their search rank.

If you want the page to be findable when people search for certain phrases, put those phrases in the page where people (and search engines) can really see them. Any "bait and switch" tactic will probably be ignored by Google and/or annoy the user.

2. You are severely limiting your audience by using Microsoft Office for web design. Microsoft Office produces pages that use Internet Explorer-specific features that aren't part of any widely accepted Internet standard... and a dumbed-down version for everyone else. Please use a serious web design tool (like Dreamweaver that doesn't try to promote one web browser over another. Or, just learn HTML.

3. If you must use Office, then you need to at least upload all of the files that it created. Yes, you uploaded the index.html file, but you didn't upload the index_files folder or any of the images inside it. So the page is more or less completely broken in anything but IE. Since your page is about real estate, you probably don't want to throw away 15% or more of your potential tenants.

4. Your use of frames may also be preventing Google from indexing your page properly. Don't use frames in your design. There is almost never a good reason to use them.

5. It's possible that the frames are something you're forced to live with because of your decision to use Geocities. As a free web host, Geocities is a bad choice for a serious web site. You're making a business proposition here, so don't use a free host that puts ads next to your page. That sends a very unprofessional message. Especially when real web hosting costs less than $10/month from any number of companies.

See my article how do I set up a web site? for more information about how to set up a web site properly.

Hope this is helpful!