Search Engine Tips

Content The best search engines got to be the best search engines by delivering sites that best matched their users' search. Why would you use a search engine that returned bad results? So the search engines use complex algorithms to find the best matches. The more content on your site - that is text in HTML, the more the search engines will have to collect about your site and the more likely you will find yourself on the top of their rankings. Every word you are reading on this page has been indexed by the major search engines and because there are so many words, this page has a better chance of finding its way on a search engine list then a similar page with less words. Targeting Keywords Search engines read your pages from the top down. So, you want to use your critical keywords at least once in the first paragraph on each web page. Then you can use it once in each paragraph after that and in the last line. Use the search engine keywords in your page title and in the name of your page if possible. All of this coordination will result in a much higher placement on Google, Yahoo and many other search engines. Link Popularity Strategy Link popularity has become increasingly important among the search engines. Because link popularity goes hand in hand with search engine optimization, it is important for any company with a web presence to build a link development strategy. To develop popularity for your web site, you should submit your site to the most visited directories. Yahoo (of course), LookSmart, About.com, and Open Directory are examples of major directories. Also, to further develop link popularity, you should consider sites/directories that are very industry specific, such as healthatoz.com for a health-related site. HTML Tags and Optimization One of the most important things a legitimate professional search engine optimizer can remember to do is check all of the HTML tags for a page and make sure that they are optimized. Understanding and Building Google PageRank For those who are not familiar with Google's Page Rank, which is commonly known as PR, is Google's calculation or score of a web page based on external and internal linking of a site, as well as on-page criteria of the web page being linked to as well as the web page being linked from. The Page Rank calculation is much more detailed and complex. PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." Secure Search Engine Placement Document structure and the style of page layout (frames, tables etc.) do affect your listing. In some cases ie: frames, it will limit the robots' ability to even index your site! If your using frames you should have the robot index the no frames version as some can't index frames or will just index the frameset which isn't much to index and will result in a low ranking. The use of tables to layout a document can and will in some cases change your placement because when you have a table for say a left border margin you force the meat of the document where most of your keywords will be found further down in the document lowering your ranking. Keep in mind that some engines bots only index part of your site ranging from 10-50%. A rule of thumb could be to put keywords in the left margin or in the top table of your document. The content of the page will help in better placement on some of the engines because they track the keyword usage in the content but of those that do some use % in which case ounce equals best or 100%. As an author I don't like to continually use the same words over and over however, if you look at it from this perspective it is very advantageous. WebCrawler and Lycos use keywords contained in the body to give a higher ranking so if placement in these two is important sprinkle keywords throughout the page. Search Engine Submission Make that your site is fully functional. You would be surprised at how many sites are on the internet that are not, whether this means that they have broken links, missing pages, or the site is not-navigable. There are many tools to help you with this. One thing that should be on the top of your list is making sure you have your keywords, description, and title perfect. We produced a checklist from all of the search engines that helps us to make sure that your site is ready when we go to submit it to the search engines.