Hello mike_la,
Thank you for your question.
There are many factors influencing the realm which you're inquiring
about-- which is usually referred to as "search engine optimization".
You will want your website to be as friendly to the spiders and search
engine robots as possible to generate high rankings on the various
search engines-- Yahoo, Google, MSN, Ask.com. One way to do this is
within the HTML that is used to create your site in the meta tags,
which are words or phrases embedded in the HTML and accessible to
robots but not to a normal website viewer. You can see this on any
website by clicking on "view" at the top of your web browser, then
selecting "source". You can then study the HTML of any webpage.
The most important meta tags of any site are located at the top of the
source page between the codes: <head> and </head>. To create meta
tags, you simply type the words you want as meta in the appropriate
areas on the page. For marketing purposes, you will care most about
the Title, Description and Keywords meta tags. These tags are what
web surfers will see when they view your site listed on search
engines-- which means that they will be some of the most important
factors in whether a person decides to view your site or not. The
"title" is what viewers see at the top of your page to the left. In
Windows, this appears on the blue bar at the very top and on this page
it states: "Google Answers: Internet Rating". This is a pretty
prominent area for first-time viewers to see and they might decide to
stay at your site or go elsewhere based on the information found in
the title. This is also what automatically shows up when someone
bookmarks your site. Some webmasters don't even put titles and just
leave the default. You do not want to do this if you want to optimise
your website for users and for searching. For each page, you'll want
to have a descriptive title. Amazingly, many web site designers fail
to put a descriptive title on each separate page or even just leave
the default! Following this advice will help you in your search
engine rankings.
For instance, if I had a website that sold auto parts and the name of
my business was AutoPartsMax, I may want to make my descriptive title
AutoPartsMax: We Sell Auto Parts! This lets the user know who I am
and what my website does. You'll want to cover both areas because a
person will either be searching for your company specifically OR what
your company does, and you will want to be well-placed in the rankings
for either occasion.
The meta tag known as the "description" is what shows up when a person
actually looks at the website from the search engine page. This is
HIGHLY important and is basically the primary factor in what will lead
people to your site from search engine results. The description
should be well-written, attention-catching and most importantly, tell
the searcher what exactly your site can do for them. For instance,
the description of Google Answers might say, "A site that provides
talented researchers to answer your questions about any subject."
Keywords are the words that your potential visitors will be typing
into search engines to find your site, the search terms. So for your
keywords, ponder what sorts of terms someone who would be wanting to
find a site like yours would type into Yahoo or Google. Put these
keywords in your meta tags and include them within the first 25 words
of your homepage.
Here are additional tips on selecting keywords:
-Use plurals in addition to singular words, but don't go overboard with repetition
-Misspell the keywords if the misspellings are common and people will
make mistakes in typing them. If your business name or site name is
often misspelled, include those common misspellings, too.
-Don't always use the most obvious keywords, at the expense of others
that might be useful. For instance, a website dealing with Siamese
cats might include cat and rank low in the search rankings, but for
siamese it would rank higher and therefore be more useful to use
"siamese" as a keyword rather than "cat".
-Don't exceed over 1,000 characters with your combined keywords. The
fewer keywords, the more effective they will be.
Register with the major search engines (Yahoo!, Google, MSN, Ask) and
register for their free directories and any other free directories in
your line of business. Supply your information to any site you find
that offers a free listing for websites of your type. Use the same
seven-word description for all of them, as well as 10 or so keywords.
Maintain your listings on a regular (monthly) basis, to ensure they're
up to date and still effective.
Choose your domain name carefully. You do not want one that sounds
too spammy as this could downgrade you in the search engine rankings.
Just as important as your meta tags is your content-- if you make a
good website with great content, the search engines will follow and so
will visitors. Make sure to focus on the first 20 words especially,
as these are important for visitors' eyes and for search engine
algorithms.
When designing the site, keep away from Flash or pages with frames.
Website visitors often find these annoying-- they're slow and take
lots of time to load or move to other pages. They also make your
pages more difficult for search engine bots to find your content.
Stay with a good HTML site.
Don't repeat the same words over and over in your articles, as this
will cause "keyword stuffing" to be suspected by the search engines
and they will ignore your site or even penalize your site and
downgrade it in the rankings. The same could happen from repeating
words in the meta tags.
Here is a good website for discussions about search engine optimization:
SEO Chat
http://www.seochat.com/
You may want to also enlist the services of a search engine
optimization firm; however, I advise against it unless you are a huge
company or something of that nature. You can follow this advice and
you can really enhance your rankings without paying big bucks to a
firm for advice.
Source:
Robert Bly, "Secrets of a Freelance Writer", Owl Books, 2006
If you need any additional clarification, let me know and I'll be glad
to assist you.
--keystroke-ga |
