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Basic Search Engine Strategies That Are Easy To Implement
- Article #1 of 8
This article begins our 8 part website
marketing plan that walks you step by step through optimizing your website to be
more search engine friendly. This technique is referred to as SEO (search engine
optimization).
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When considering all the website marketing
options available today - the most effective and inexpensive option is to rank
highly for your primary keyword(s) on the primary search engine's natural searches
(many times called organic listings). It is important to understand the basics
of how search engines operate. Search engines send automated programs (called
robot "spiders") to the Internet searching for and then indexing the
content of web pages they find.
When a search engine robot finds your page,
the act of reviewing and capturing your page content is called "spidering". When
a search engine robot spiders your page it records items it considers to be the
main focus of your webpage. You ultimately determine what the spider considers
to be important by what and how you emphasis items within your page. These
robots gather a great deal of data which then is used to provide your natural
search ranking.
The basis for this section of our website is to help you
"tune up" your website to ensure it is optimized for indexing. The techniques we
discuss throughout this section are not magic bullets to subvert the search
engines, but strategies that will help the search engines identify, organize and
index your website correctly. This process is called search engine optimization
or SEO for short.
1. Identify Your Keyword
Phrases (DO NOT SKIP THIS POINT)
Website marketing through SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
of your website begins with identifying your target market AND the keywords with
which they search out products and/or services you are offering. Doing this can
sometimes be very tedious however it is the VERY FIRST step that should be
taken. Most business owners feel they already know these keywords then skip this
step of the process. In 99% of the cases we have worked, this is a terrible
mistake.
Business owners tend to be too close to their business to
look at the marketing process objectively. This can pose a serious problem when
trying to identify target markets and keywords. Take our challenge and do not
skip this valuable process, the worst that can happen is you confirm you were
correct and you just may learn you have a brand new niche target market you were
completely unaware was there for you to tap.
One of the best and free tools to research keywords that
are being used today in searches is provided by WordTracker.com (click
here). Type in the most broad keyword(s) you can think of for your
product/service and work toward the most defined phrases.
2. Create A Page Title That Is Rich With Keywords
Each page of your website should have a unique Page Title
<TITLE>Website
Marketing 101</TITLE>.
The page title should be 5 to 8 words long and contain the keyword(s) that best
describe the content of the page being careful to limit filler words such as
the, and, a, etc. The title tag is found in the HTML code between the
<HEAD></HEAD> It also appears in the blue bar at the top of your browser
(example below).
The page title is the hyperlink string of text found on a
search engine that users will click when to reach your website. Since this
is the most prominent part of your link and description on the search engine, it
is always wise to make the title one that will compel the user to click it and
visit your website. Below is an example:
Keyword Prominence
You should never start the title tag with the name of your company!!
You should use the keyword phrase that best fits the page. This
technique is called keyword prominence and as with all "good things" it
should be used sparingly. For example do not start each paragraph of you
website/webpage with your "hottest keyword" because then you would be
considered to be "spamming" the page with the keyword and just like e-mail
spam - ALL spam is bad! IF you feel compelled to use your company name in
the title, be sure to use it at the very end of your title.
Note: Your title is THE
most important key to the identity of your webpage and it is the trigger for
which traffic will be brought to your website, so please take time to
develop a killer title!
3. The Description META Tag
Ever wonder where the description under
your title link on a search engine came from? Well the majority of search
engines use what's called the Description META tag. It is found within the
<HEAD></HEAD> tag of your HTML coding. Your description should be no more
than 2 clear and concise sentences making sure to utilize your main keyword
phrase(s) of the page. Do not include any of your other keywords that are
not found on the page.
While the maximum number of characters in
a Description META tag is 255, we suggest never to use more than 100-150
characters and to emphasis our point Google only displays the first 60 or
less (more may be indexed).
Example of a Description META Tag is
below.
<META NAME="DESCRIPTION"
CONTENT="Website marketing help, tips & strategies. SEO techniques
following each search engine's Best Practices guidelines for better search
engine placement.">
4. The
Keyword META Tag
Since most web pages are developed first
then the website marketing and SEO techniques are applied, the best approach
to optimizing a page is to identify the primary keyword theme and the main
keywords of each page. Once identified reduce them to a short "laundry list"
format. Write a killer title, a concise description and then use the keyword
"laundry list" for this section - the Keyword META tag.
Recently Google disclosed they no longer
utilize the Keyword META tag, however we suggest you use it in your SEO
program anyway. It still has some value with other search engines and,
believe it or not, search engines (like Google) have been known to change
their search criteria (called algorithms). One may be tempted to throw
in every keyword that remotely relates to the page, however keep these to
those keywords that are actually found on the page.
Example of a Keyword META tag is below.
<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="website
marketing, website marketing strategies, internet marketing strategy, web
marketing, search engine marketing firm, search engine optimization, search
engine placement, website promotion, website ranking">
Once you have followed the points outlined above you have
done more website marketing and SEO than 95% of your online competition!
Let's not stop here, there are several other things you can
do to improve your search engine ranking.
5. Header Tags (H1, H2, H3 etc.)
Remember keyword prominence that we touch
upon when we discussed Page Titles? This website marketing technique can be
used in other areas of you SEO such as the Header Tags.
Header tags are coding tags which
identify the subject of a section of you web page (sometimes called sub
headings). There are 6 levels of these tags (1 thru 6, 1 being the most
important and 6 the least) and they are identified in the coding in the
following way <H1></H1>, <H2></H2>, <H3></H3>, etc.
The #5 header tag above is shown as an
example below.
<H4>5. Header Tags (H1, H2, H3 etc.)</H4>
Some designers make a big mistake by
not utilizing these tags. The reason for the shift is CSS (Cascading Style
Sheet) designs. You cannot expect an engine to parse the CSS file to figure out
what headline should be used. The designer must define and use the keywords in
the tags within the Cascading Style Sheet file instead of creating tags with
other names. The use of header tags is
imperative to a successful SEO program for your website.
6. Paragraph One of the Page Content
The first paragraph of your web page should
contain the main keywords, this is generally the introduction to the page
content. Do not stuff you keywords within this paragraph, do not over do it
here as more is not better.
Keyword Density - the number of
times a keyword appears on a page divided by the number of words on the page.
The keyword density should never exceed 2%
on a page.
Where the keyword is positioned within a
paragraph is also notable. The closer to the beginning of the first paragraph
or two of a page is important.
7. ALT Image Attribute & Keywords
The ALT attribute for images was designed
to help your site utilized by site-impaired visitors and it also gives you
another technique to enhance your SEO program.
Place keyword rich text in the ALT image
attribute for each image on your website larger than 10 px X 10 px. As with
the title tags, we do not suggest spamming these tags.
8. Keywords Within Your Hyperlinks
When a search engine robot spiders your
page it is looking for what it considers to be the focus of the page. If they
see a keyword(s) within a hyperlink it is considered to be more important than
the basic text of the page. The importance of the keyword(s) within the link
is compounded when the page the link takes the visitor to has the very same
keyword(s) within the page name.
Navigation links VS text based links -
whenever possible link pages within your website to primary keywords of a page
within the body of the text of the page. While hyperlink coding is all the
same, robots spiders perceive links within the body text of a page to be a
more valuable find than the very same link within the common navigation
structure.
So it is important to utilize your main
keyword(s) and phrases within your hyperlinks.
9. Search Engine Friendly Navigation
All navigation is not created equal! The
type of navigation you select within your website can help or hinder you
website marketing efforts. Flash navigation is a complete waist in our opinion
and not very far behind Flash is JavaScript. These are considered to be some
of the best visually enhancing navigation menus available but almost certainly
make your website navigation impossible for spiders.
If you already have one of these navigation
structures - don't chuck it, but you must add an HTML navigation structure to
each page of your website to help the spider navigate through it. The most
common place to put the HTML navigation is at the bottom of each page.
Many e-commerce websites and those with
content management systems produce dynamically generated webpages. These can
be recognized by the use of a question (?) mark in the URL (web address).
Search engines sometimes stop at the question mark when parsing the URL - they
consider the URL to be too long and refuse to go further. If you find your
interior pages are not being indexed, this may be the reason. To ensure even
the longest URL is indexed you may have to consider a URL rewrite or create a
comprehensive site map.
10. Useful Site Maps
Contrary to popular belief, not ALL
websites need to create a site map! Bet you never heard a website marketing
expert say that before! While most website do need and should create a site
map, a small 5 page or less website with a navigation structure outlined in
point 9 above does not need a site map.
For the other 98% of website - you need a
site map. The best sit map is a comprehensive, concise and easy to use site
map. Site maps help people and robot spiders locate pages within your website.
XML site maps are requested and suggested
by all the major search engines but NOT required. An XML site map is an
expanded version of the standard site map (Page Titles with links to the
page). XML site maps also include data such as the importance of the page in
relation to the other pages, when the page was last updated and how frequently
the page is expected to be updated.
XML-Sitemaps.com
provides a free XML site map tool that you may find helpful in creating your
site map. Once you have created the XML site map you should submit it to each
of the major search engines, for instructions on how to do this visit the
webmaster tools section of each search engine.
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