Search Engine Optimization

Possibly the biggest fallacy on the Net is "If you build it they will come!".

Search Engine Optimization has become a multi-million dollar industry. You’ve seen the SPAM emails guaranteeing you top search results, haven’t you? It’s not uncommon to find established web designers climbing on the bandwagon and becoming experts on the subject, because they finally realize that’s what their clients need. What good is an expensive website if there’s nobody finding it online?

There are nearly as many experts as there are different theories about what works. Most of those different theories have been considered correct at one time or another. The landscape of the Search Engine world is constantly changing, and many people are spending countless hours trying to figure out what’s working and what’s not in any given month. Doing this is called “chasing the search engine algorithms”.

There are many other factors as well, but if you follow these guidelines, you'll stand a much better chance, and you'll be off to a good start.

1. Title Meta Tag
The title tag is what displays in the top blue band of Internet Explorer, and what the first line of the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages) will show when your site is found.  Your title tag of your website should be easy to read and designed to bring in traffic. Your main keyword phrase should be used toward the beginning of the tag.

Do NOT make the mistake of putting your company name first, unless you believe people are searching for it that way. in the past, the title tag was better written with a capital letter starting the tag, and followed by all lower-case letters, (unless you’re using proper nouns). Today, that matters less, as capitalized words are fine as well. However, don't use all caps. Like an email in all caps, it's considered wrong by most people, and might be perceived as spam by a search engine.

A proper title tag looks like this:

<title> Important search term first | Company name if you must</title>

You can use punctuation too, with equally good results, as in:

<title> Pest Control, Portland Oregon  | Company name if you must</title>

Your title tag is the "headline" that people will see in the search results. It's also one of the primary factors for the search engines in determining your ranking for a given search phrase, although that's declining in importance. 

I like to follow a few basic rules when writing title tags...

1.      Keep in mind that only 65 characters or so will display in Google search results, so I keep my titles shorter than that when possible. This makes for a nice headline for the SERPS, and prevents the title from being cut off in mid sentence...

2.      Write the title in plain English, using proper grammar, make it easily readable, and not just stuff a jumble of keywords in there.  Remember this is the headline for your search listing. As a headline, it should captivate the readers attention and motivate them to click. What do you think is more effective to draw in a customer..."Cleveland Real Estate  - Joe Blow" or "Cleveland Real Estate  - Secrets to Saving Money"  ?

3.      A Common Trend seems to be Capitalizing Important Words. I like that and it makes your listing stand out from the crowd, but technically, will not help (or hurt) your rankings. Standing out from the crowd is important.  I don't recommend using all caps though, because like emails written in all caps, it's considered improper.

4.      I still use my primary key phrase (unique for each page) in the title tag when possible, and I also prefer it at the front.  Although a well designed content rich website that is properly "themed" can still rank well without having the keyword in the title, the odds are still in your favor if you do use the primary phrase in your title tag.
 

2. Description Meta Tag
The description tag is the paragraph that people will see when your page comes up in the search results. The title tag is the headline, and this is the paragraph below it.

Your description tag should be captivating and designed to attract business. It should be easy to read, and compel the reader to act right now and follow your link. Without a description tag, search engines will frequently display the first text on your page. Is yours appropriate as a description of the page?

A proper description tag looks like this:

If your title tag is considered the "headline" then think of your description tag as the "ad copy" below the headline. A good description tag will compel the reader to visit your website. 

Google cuts off the displayed description tag at about 150 characters, but may index up to 185 characters. Other engines may go up t o250 characters, but will still only display about 150.   Therefore, try to say what you've got to say in 150 characters or less, but feel free to use up to 180, and even up to 250 if you're not concerned with the entire thing getting indexed by all the search engines..

Your description tag is not only   "sales copy" for people to read, deciding to click your ad or not, but it's also food for the hungry search engine spiders.  There's probably no stronger or more important meta tag than the description tag.   

However, one mistake I see a lot is people trying to stuff too much information into their meta description tag, then reusing that meta description in multiple places on their website. Don’t describe your whole business, just describe the page in question.

For example, let’s say you're a contractor, and you provide plumbing, remodeling, and electrical work. You would want to have a completely different meta description tag on each of your service pages. Don't make the mistake of using one description for all your pages.

Use your primary key phrase in the beginning of your description tag too.  This gives a higher "keyword prominence" percentage to the search engines and your site will rank higher.  Don’t Overuse your key phrase though, or it can be considered "web spam".  Higher then zero keyword prominence  is good,  but higher still is not always better. 

Use natural sounding language, proper grammar, and try to peak interest in the subject. Remember, you want the reader to click your ad, not just to be found. how many times have you skipped over a search result because the two lines of text you see in the SERPS were just gibberish.

3. Keywords Meta Tag
The importance of Meta keyword tags fluctuates from month to month among different search engines. There is a debate in the SEO community as to whether or not they help at all on certain search engines. In fact, in the summer of 2004 it appeared as if they were losing importance altogether. However, you'll NEVER be penalized on any search engines for using relevant targeted keywords in moderation, and they can only help you with most, especially Yahoo. However, avoid "stuffing" your keyword met tags with too many keywords. Just use relevant tags that apply directly to the content of that particular page, and don’t overdo it.

A proper keyword tag looks like this:

4. Alt Tags
The small yellow box that comes up when your mouse cursor is placed over an image is called the ALT tag. Every relevant image should have an alt tag with your key words or phrases mentioned in the tag. For example, the ALT description might be "Oregon Widget company logo" instead of "companynamelogo.jpg".

A proper ALT tag goes after the file name, and before the Align indicator like this: (I’ve bolded it for visibility in the entire image tag)

<IMG SRC="images/name.jpeg"ALT="alt text phrase here" ALIGN=right HEIGHT="92" WIDTH="140"BORDER="0" HSPACE="2" VSPACE="2">

5. Header Tags
The text of each page is given more weight by the search engines if you make use of header tags and then use descriptive body text below those headers. Bullet points work well too. It is not enough to merely BOLD or enlarge your text headlines.

A proper header tag looks like this:

6. Link Text
Search engine spiders cannot follow image links. In addition to having image links or buttons on your web pages, you should have text links at the bottom or elsewhere. The text that the user sees when looking at the link is called the link text. A link that displays products does not carry as much weight to the search engines as a link called Oregon widgets. Link text is very important, and is actually one of the most frequently overlooked aspects of web design that I've seen.

7. Site Map
Using a site map not only makes it easy for your users to see the entire structure of your website, but it also makes it easier for the search engines to “spider” your site. When the search engine spiders come to visit, they will follow all of the text links from your main index page. If one of those links is to a site map, then the spiders will go right to the sitemap, and consequently visit every page you have text linked to from that site map.  On the site map page, try to have a sentence or two describing each page, and not just a page of links.

8. Relevant Inbound Links
By relevant, I mean similar industry or subject related sites. Right now, no single strategy can get your site ranked higher faster than being linked to by dozens of other relevant websites. It used to be that the quantity of incoming links mattered most, but today, in November 2004, it's much better to have three highly relevant links to you from other popular related websites than 30 links from unrelated low ranked sites. If there are other businesses in your industry that you can trade links with, it will help your site enormously. Link to others, and have them link to you. It’s proven, and it works.

To see who’s linking to you in Google, which some feel is most important type the following...

9. Your Content
Not to be forgotten of course, is the actual content of your webpage. It must be relevant helpful information that people want to read. These days, each webpage should be laser focused on one specific product or subject, in order to rank highly for that search phrase. The days of writing one webpage to appeal to dozens of search terms are long gone.

Ideally, each page should have between 400 to 650 words on it. Too few, and the search engines won't consider it to be relevant enough. Too many words and the search engine spiders may have a hard time determining the actual subject or focus of the page.

Use your keywords or phrases often, and use them at the beginning of your paragraphs wherever possible. Don’t overuse them and make the page sound phony, but don’t write a page about a certain subject, and not mention that subject repeatedly either. Reading it out loud to yourself is a great way to judge how natural your text sounds.

10. Avoid Cheating
With all of these tidbits of information, it's tempting to think that you can stuff 100 keywords into your title, or create a page with the phrase "Oregon widget company" being used 100 times in headers, text links, ALT tags, bullet points etc. but that cannot help you. In fact, it can penalize you, and get your website banned from certain search engines like Google and Yahoo.

As search engine robots continue to utilize better types of AI (Artificial Intelligence) they will in effect, get smarter. They are already starting to look for things the same way you and I do; with the highest relevance given to pages that directly relate to information about their exact search phrase.

11. Linking Campaign

Once you have optimized your website for its specific keywords and phrases, you now need to implement a theme related linking campaign. You should acquire theme related reciprocal links from good quality websites, sites that have good page content. Once you start to acquire good quality links, you will see that your site will start to appear on the fist page of the top search engines like, Google, Yahoo and Msn.

Once you've done these fundamentals, what do you do then?  - here's SEO 201