Making your web pages search engine-friendly
By Shaun Cummiskey
Website promotion is one of the most hotly contested topics these days. There are literally hundreds of companies who are more than happy to charge you top-dollar to "submit your site" to various search engines or "guarantee top listings" in search results. And all of these companies claim that they know the "right" way, they know the "secrets," and they'll get you more traffic than anyone else. Don't believe it!
Companies which promise to promote your website come in two forms: professionals and nobodies. By professionals, I'm talking about companies who are well-known and supposedly reputable. The nobodies, of course, are the people you've never heard of. Speaking from experience, I can tell you that not even the so-called pros can get more traffic to your site. I once paid $60 to the Submit-It service to have my site professionally Submited to numerous search engines. I came out of that experience with a hole in my pocket and no more visitors than I'd been getting in the past.
Since those days, I've taken it upon myself to learn more and more about search engines and listings. I've experimented with keywords, META tags, intervals between submissions, and even "doorway" pages. My research over the years has proved invaluable to myself and my colleagues. I've even been published in 2600 magazine for my knowledge of the search engines.
As the owner of more than 15 domains - and the designer of numerous websites - I can tell you flat-out that the purported "secrets" of search engine submission are nothing more than marketing ploys. There is no "secret" to getting listed, or being first in the search results - nobody, absolutely nobody can guarantee you top listings. Submission companies just want you to believe that, so that you hand your money over to them.
What does matter to the search engines is so simplistic, so basic, that the submission companies would hate me for giving this information away for free. So that's exactly what I'm going to do! Getting yourself a favorable listing in search engines is a matter of following two easy steps when designing your pages.
Step 1: Use your TITLE Tag Properly!
Most search engines place a lot of weight on the content of your TITLE tag, but they're not quick to say this - in fact, many engines keep their indexing routines secret to prevent abuse of the indexes themselves. Only Altavista (my favorite search engine, by the way) openly admits that the TITLE tag has a lot to do with your listing.
Your page's title is important and you should design it properly. So many people set the title of their page to something totally unrelated to their site. I see a lot of sites where the page title is simply "Welcome!" or "Thank You For Visiting!" I also see plenty of pages where the title is "Untitled Document" or "Title Your Page Here" - the page owner hadn't even specified a title at all. It's unfortunate because those pages are missing out on potential search engine ranking.
Your TITLE tag should clearly represent what your site is about. If you're building a page that talks about your company's products, the title should thoroughly reflect that topic. "Our Products" or "Product Listings" is a bad choice for a page title - people are probably going to be searching for your company by name or by the type of product you sell. Thus, something like "CompanyABC: Premium Health and Nutrition Supplements" or "Household Cleaning Products from CompanyXYZ" are much better choices!
Also consider using keywords in your TITLE tag. For example, let's say you're selling refrigerators. You might want to make the title of your main page "Bob's Refrigerators are Ice Cold. These are the best refrigerators in the business!" As you can see, this title gets right to the point about the topic of the page. It also uses your keyword: "Bob's Refrigerators," and more specifically "refrigerators" (twice). Someone searching for "refrigerators" is more likely to find YOUR page than a page titled "Refrigerators For Sale."
Step 2: Keywords aren't just for META tags
Over the years, META tags have been hawked as "the" way to get good listings in the search engines. Early on, this was true - when META tags were first created in the HTML specifications, search engines put a lot of weight on them. Several years ago you could literally boost yourself to the top of the search results by including repetative keywords in your META tags.
However, META tags have now become the most abused part of web pages. People routinely add META keywords to their page which have no relevance to their site's topic. For example, many webmasters use META keywords like "pics" or "mp3" even if their site has nothing to do with those categories. They're hoping that people who search for hot topics will stumble across their page and stop by.
It doesn't work anymore. META tags now carry a surprisingly LOW weight in all of the popular search engines. If you don't believe me, try it for yourself: create an empty web page and fill the META keywords tag with some hot topics. Submit it to the search engines and then run a search on those words a few days later. I promise that your page won't show up anywhere near the top of the results... If it shows up at all!
What's important now is the overall content of your page. Search engines have algorithms (methods) for determining what your web pages are really about. These algorithms are closely-guarded secrets, for obvious reasons. However, they all focus on one thing these days: the REAL content in your web page. If you create a web page about "The CompanyABC Business Opportunity" but include META keywords like "free pics" and "download music," your site's not going to be indexed under the topics you defined in your keywords. In fact, it might be rejected altogether!
Not only should you make sure that your META keywords tag appropriately reflects the content of your page, you should ensure that the text content of your page contains a good distribution of your keywords. Mention your company name often (and evenly) throughout your site. Consider the following two paragraphs about MegaCompany:
Paragraph 1: "MegaCompany is the best company around. Imagine working at home and being your own boss! Your potential for earnings is unlimited. You can sell as much as you want or as little as you want. The amount of money you make depends on how much effort you put into your business."
Paragraph 2: "MegaCompany is the best company around. Imagine working at home and being your own boss - MegaCompany makes it possible! Your potential for earnings with MegaCompany are unlimited. MegaCompany allows you to sell as much as you want or as little as you want. The amount of money you make with MegaCompany depends on how much effort you put into your MegaCompany business."
The second paragraph is going to get you MUCH better rankings when someone performs a search for MegaCompany. As you can see, the keyword (MegaCompany) is used more often in the second paragraph. It's also evenly distributed. Don't try bunching up your keywords at the end of the page, that doesn't work and may prevent you from being listed at all. You should concentrate on using keywords as part of your site's content, and spreading them evenly throughout your text.
As you can see, these two steps are pretty simple. It's all a matter of incorporating them into the design of your page - or redesigning your pages to fit, if your site is already live and Submited. You might not end up #1 in the search results, but I guarantee that if you follow these two steps you'll achieve better overall rankings.
Above all else, avoid common spammer tactics like grouping keywords at the bottom of your page, or trying to "hide" keywords by making the text the same color as your page's background. Search engines look for these methods and will often disqualify your page if they encounter what they think is spam.
Good luck and here's to higher search engine rankings!
Shaun works at home as a network marketer and freelance web developer. http://www.bluebar.com
| DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware. |
More Search Engine Tricks Articles
More By Developer Shed
 developerWorks - FREE Tools!
|
Hold your calendar on January 30, 2008 for this free webcast on the new i5/OS. Rational's Enterprise Modernization products will be discussed at this webcast as they help to drive the application development environment for this new System i OS. <br />And learn how i5/OS will take you to the next step of efficient, resilient business processing. You will hear about the new i5/OS capabilities as it will be the most significant i5/OS release in years. If you cannot join the webcast on 1/30/08 you can still use this link to listen to the replay.<br />
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
David Barnes, Lead Evangelist for IBM Emerging Internet Technologies will discuss aspects of Web 2.0 that bring value to corporations, academia, and government. He'll also discuss IBM's vision around Web 2.0, including the importance of remixability and consumability. The discussion will culminate with examples of various IBM Software Group solutions you can use to get ahead of the Web 2.0 adoption curve.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Learn how you can extend modern application lifecycle management to IBM System z through the IBM Rational Software Delivery Platform (SDP). The Did you say mainframe? e-kit includes podcasts, webcasts, tutorials, white and red papers, demos, and articles designed to help ease the challenges of modernizing your enterprise. This complimentary kit for mainframe developers is a practical, how-to guide for making the most of an existing development environment, including the skills and infrastructure already in place at an established enterprise.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Asset Reuse is a key strategy for companies looking to create innovative solutions to solve complex software development problems. Searching for, identifying, updating, using and deploying software assets can be a difficult challenge. Listen to this webcast, to learn about strategies and tools that you can leverage for a successful project, including Rational Asset Manager, Rational Software Architect and WebSphere Service Registry and Repository.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Join this Rational Talks to You teleconference on December 11 at 1:00 pm ET to get tips on building your own plugins with Rational Method Composer. Get your questions answered!
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Learn the basics of the IBM Customer Information Control System (CICS). With a hands-on exercise, learn how to get your first CICS application up and running on your desktop using TXSeries V6.1 for Windows. The tutorial shows you how to download and install a free trial version of TXSeries V6.1.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
As businesses grow increasingly dependent upon Web applications, these complex entities grow more difficult to secure. Most companies equip their Web sites with firewalls, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), and network and host security, but the majority of attacks are on applications themselves – and these technologies cannot prevent them. This paper explains what you can do to help protect your organization, and it discusses an approach for improving your organization’s Web application security.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Whether you are creating new applications or modifying existing ones, managing integration of new components with traditional z/OS elements is a critical part of building and deploying modern applications. Listen to this webcast to see how IBM can help you optimize your development process using an IDE like Rational Developer for System z that integrates with management tools, such as ClearCase to manage your application development on mainframes.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Attend this launch webcast with Scott Hebner, Vice President of IBM Rational Marketing and Strategy, where he will overview Rational’s new offerings and programs to help customers accelerate software innovation on System z. He will discuss how these solutions help organizations extend their core business processes toward modern architectures such as SOA and web technologies to deliver business improvements that stand the test of time.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
The discipline of assembling and delivering software is maturing beyond standard developer-centric compile/test software builds. The end-to-end software development lifecycle is emerging as the new focus moves “Beyond the Build.” Join this on demand webcast to learn about methods for streamlining software delivery and key capabilities of the IBM Rational Build Forge framework for automating build and release management in environments of any size.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
All FREE IBM® developerWorks Tools!
|
