Now What?
Now that you have made your first web site you might be asking
yourself, "What Next?" Unless you are particularly lucky,
you might be thinking, "Where are all the customers I expected?
Why didn't they come like the were supposed to?" If you are
like me, you might have even blamed the media. They seemed to
be telling me, "build it and they will come" but nothing
was further from the truth.
After I made my first web site, I had eighty people come and
none of them bought. It drove me mad and I blamed everyone but
myself. In truth, I was the problem. I hadn't done the things
necessary to drive the traffic to my website. I really didn't
know anything about the web, what makes people (or search engines)
come to a web site, or why people buy once they get there. The
truth was I needed to learn more. The first thing I needed to
have was a plan to get people to come to my site. I needed a "Web
Promotion Strategy."
Web Promotion Strategy
Since I started my business on a shoestring, I knew that traditional
advertising was out of the picture for now. I decided to focus
my initial efforts on search engines for three main reasons:
1.) Search engines account for approximately 90 percent of all
web traffic.
2.) Most search engines don't charge for listing.
3.) Millions of people use search engines every day to find products
or services.
Our Web Promotion Strategy at this point is actually a Search
Engine Strategy. Just as any strategy requires a course of action,
we need a solid plan and a guide to get us through to our goal.
We need to realize that improving your web site's ranking among
the major search engines is a process. A process is a series of
actions used to achieve something. It takes effort, careful planning
execution and patience to have a successful web site.
Success won't be instantaneous but it will come. Keep careful
notes and be willing to make incremental changes over time. In
the introduction I said the we need to "Think, constantly
learn, and experiment. Reevaluate and do it again better."
That's our strategy here. We do something. We record the results,
and we do what we can to improve on that. Then we do it all over
again. My job is to teach you the technical and marketing details.
It's your job to put in the effort and do the thinking. In this
business, like all others, it takes effort to get results.
Required Actions
1.) Check your site's positions on major search engines for your
keywords on a regular basis.
2.) Analyze your results and make an assessment of what you might
do to improve your positioning.
3.) Keep detailed records.
4.) Make changes to your web pages.
5.) Resubmit your site.
Internet Search Engines
To most people, any way that they search the Internet is what
they call using a search engine. Actually there are many Internet
search tools and a search engine is just one very important type
of search tool. Throughout this course, we will concentrate on
Internet search engines.
The two most common Internet search tools are:
1.) Search engines
2.) Directories
Both of these search tools are databases and do basically the
thing (they help people find the information they are looking
for on the internet) but they are very different in both the way
they are used and in the way information is recorded in their
databases. The main difference is that search engines use "spiders"
to populate their databases and directories do not.
Spiders are computer programs (applications) that sort, evaluate,
record and retrieve information in a database. This type of software
got its name because it figuratively "crawls" the web
seeking its prey (information). Search engines use spiders and
submissions from web site administrators to enter information
into their databases.
Directories rely on submissions for web site administrators and
research by their staff in order to build their databases. Directories
are in reality more like a book's table of contents or an outline.
Each item is categorized and sub-categorized into a "directory
tree." Users "drill" down from general to more
specific information until they find they information they need.
Even though directories usually have a "search" feature,
which delivers the required information in a similar format to
search engines, they operate very differently. For now, we will
leave directories behind and concentrate on search engines (spiders).
What do spiders like to eat?
Internet spiders don't actually eat anything but the content
of a search engine is mainly dependent on their activity and their
preferences. Each search engine's spider has its own secret algorithm
(formula) that it uses to judge which sites get the top listings
and those who don't. It's our job to find out what the spider
likes and to give it what it likes. This is how we outperform
our competitors and get our site listed before theirs, preferably
at the top.
There are substantial differences in the characteristics and
effectiveness of spiders depending on this algorithm, size of
the database and how current the information is. The faster a
spider is affects how well it can handle the size of the database
as well as its ability to supply the most current information.
The web's hypertext linking mechanism provides the links to other
pages. From a single web page is the spider begins to access other
web pages. Basically it confirms the existence of the web page,
indexes the content of the web page, identifies all of the hyperlinks
to other web pages and then proceeds to follow those links repeating
the process over and over with each new web page.
As you are probably well aware, submitting to the search engines
is not enough to get large numbers of visitors to your web site.
We need to be listed in the top one or two pages in a search otherwise
our chances of being found are greatly reduced. Just to give you
an example, someone once told me that mathematically if you were
selling a million dollars worth of products or services from being
on page one of a search engine, your revenue would drop to about
$18,000 from slipping to page two. That's a big difference. Obviously,
we want to be on top.
Well, you are probably asking yourself, "If the formula
is secret, how do we find it out?" The answer is to do our
best to figure out what the spider like to eat and feed it the
information it wants. How do we do that? How do we figure out
the mind of a spider? We need to study the spider and see how
it works.
Components
Internet search engines consist of two major components: query
term and database. Lets take a brief look at each:
Query Term - An expression or research topic in a format
that can be processed by the search engine. Query terms usually
consist of "keywords" or "key phrases" which
are matched against results in the engines database. A key word
is a single word where as a key phrase is appropriately a "phrase"
or a series of words. Keyword phrases allow you to provide a more
specific target by which someone can find your web site. Your
chances of becoming highly ranked in a search engine database
using keyword phrases are significantly higher than when using
keywords alone. You type in your query term into a form on the
search engine and the database's records are searched based on
(1) predefined logic and/or (2) specific instructions from the
individual doing the query.
Database - is basically a collection of information, which
is indexed by the spider. The content of databases vary from search
engine to search engine depending on the "secret formula",
the size of the database and how current the information is and
what web pages have been submitted as a starting point for the
spider. The database delivers the results from its search to the
"hit list", which is the form that shows the hyperlinks,
titles and/or descriptions of the web pages that it found. Hit
lists also vary from search engine to search engine. Some only
display the title of the page while others also give a description.
Exercise 1: Keyword Phrases in WebCrawler
As stated earlier, the best way to find information on the Internet
is to use keyword phrases. In this exercise you will use WebCrawler
to see how individuals might find your site when they surf the
web. We also see what kind of information they see when they find
it.
1.) Go to www.webcrawler.com
2.) Type in a keyword phrase that you think describes your business
or offer into the search box and push submit.
For instance, type in commercial real estate and see what you
get.
When I did it, I got 4,192,890 sites found for commercial real
estate. Notice the format under "Web Site Results."
The only description of the site is the site title which is defined
in the site's <TITLE>Title Goes Here</TITLE> tag.
3.) Type the same keyword phrase using quotation marks around
the phrase.
For instance, type in "commercial real estate"
The results from my search are significantly lower. My search
results now
Display 35,895 found.
4.) Add a city to your query string this time inside the quotation
marks and search again.
I typed in "commercial real estate Champaign" using
the quotation marks. This time I only got 3 listings.
5.) Repeat steps 2-4 from this exercise only this time use the
name of your business as the keyword phrase.
I typed in the keyword phrase James Burch for each of the preceding
steps. Step 2 got me 1,438,260 sites. Step 2 showed 494 sites
and Step 3 got none.
6.) Type in your URL instead of the keyword phrase. You don't
need to use quotation marks this time. Did your site come up?
If it did, what does it say? Does your title accurately describe
the keywords you originally searched for?
I typed in www.jamesburch.com and the results said: 1. Home
What have we learned so far? Here are the obvious:
1.) WebCrawler only displays the pages title and no other information.
2.) The more specific the search is, the more likely we are to
find the information that we are looking for.
3.) Our web site, www.jamesburch.com is listed on WebCrawler.
4.) The only possible way to find www.jamesburch.com on WebCrawler
is to type in the domain name (if we already knew that, we wouldn't
need the search engine.)
5.) Only 3 listing came up for the key phrase "commercial
real estate Champaign"
Please don't be discouraged by these results. Number 5 is actually
very encouraging. Since only 3 listings came up under the key
phrase "commercial real estate Champaign", we can be
assured that after we optimize a page, we can be at the worst
be listed number four. The number one spot is within striking
distance! See… this is easier than you thought.
Now let's for a moment, think about what else we have learned
so far. Remember to keep your notebook. Write down any other observations.
Think about what factors might be important for WebCrawler's "secret
formula?" Don't you think that the title is likely to weigh
very heavily in its decision making process.
If you want to continue with the experiment, do these steps:
1.) Make a copy of your home page or the page that best describes
your keyword phrase and rename it commercialrealestateWC.html
or whatever you want. Just be sure to use some code so you know
it's a page for WebCrawler. I used WC. (Using your keywords in
your file name won't hurt either)
2.) Change the title tag to your keyword phrase.
For example <TITLE>Commercial Real Estate Champaign</TITLE>.
3.) Upload this new page to your server.
4.) Go to the bottom of the search page you are on in WebCrawler
and click on Submit a Site.
5.) At the very bottom of the Add URL page that comes up, click
on submit where it says, "You may also submit your site to
WebCrawler's continually refreshed database of URLs and it will
be considered for inclusion in our index."
6.) Fill in the form with your URL (the URL of the new page you
just created), your email address (Important: always use a junk
email address other than your "real email address" for
email from search engines otherwise you will be sorry), the primary
language (leave the default, "English"), Geographical
location: (leave the default, "United States") and use
the pull down menu to select a category. (In this example I would
choose "Home/Real Estate).
7.) Push the Send button.
8.) Come back and try your keyword phrase in a few weeks in WebCrawler
and record your results in your notebook.
9.) If you have a stats package on your server, keep an eye on
the hits for this page. Write down you findings.
Exercise 2: Comparing Search Engines
As stated earlier, each search engine has its own unique characteristics.
Some also have similarities. In this exercise you will use several
search engines to see the similarities and differences for yourself.
- Go to www.excite.com
- Type in the same keyword phrase that you used in step 2 of
exercise 1.
What happened? Did the same page come up in the number one spot
as it did in WebCrawler? What kind of information is presented
in Excite?
You should notice several differences and at least one similarity.
The similarity is easy. Excite also uses the page title. It also
adds additional information not available in WebCrawler. Right
below the title, you will see the "page description".
We will talk about this more later but for now, this information
is contained in one of the pages "meta-tags." Meta-tags
are hidden code that you put into your website that spiders read
and place here on the page.
- Make a mental note of the description of the page in the number
one listing.
- Click on the hyperlink for that page and wait for the page
to load.
- Click on "View" in the menu bar.
- Click on "Source" in the pop up menu.
Notepad should open and the html code from the page should be
displayed.
Notice the tags. We talked about the <title></title>
tags in the previous exercise. Look at the tags that start with
<meta. The one that says <meta NAME="description"
CONTENT= is what you are reading on the page. While you are here,
note the other meta tag that starts with <meta NAME="keywords"
CONTENT=. We will talk more about this but these are the keywords
that the spider uses to index your site.
Did you notice that the keyword phrase we used (in my example,
the phrase "commercial real estate") is used in three
separate places here.
It's in the title:
<title>A to Z Commercial Real Estate Resources</title>
It's in the meta description:
<meta NAME="description" CONTENT="Commercial
real estate listings, statistics…
And in the keywords:
<meta NAME="keywords" CONTENT="Commercial real
estate, listings, loans…
- Close Notepad.
- Click on your browser's back button until you get back to
the hit page from www.excite.com
- Notice the other differences. The URL is listed. Example http://www.vandema.com
Excite includes [more from this site] which contains more pages
from this site and Directory: Home and Real Estate > Commercial
> Commercial Property > Guides and Directories which includes
other sites in the same category.
Next we will look at one more search engine for this exercise.
- Click once in the URL field of your browser and type in www.lycos.com.
- Type in the same keyword phrase that you used so far in these
exercises.
Notice how the content is arranged and what information is listed.
Be sure to keep notes that you can refer back to later.
Popular Search Engines
There are hundreds of search engines. Later I will show you how
to find and submit to them but here are some of the more popular
ones for you to take a look at:
AltaVista www.altavista.com
Excite www.excite.com
Google www.google.com
Hotbot www.hotbot.com
Infoseek www.infoseek.com
Lycos www.lycos.com
Northern Light www.northernlight.com
WebCrawler www.webcrawler.com
Note: Yahoo - www.yahoo.com
is a Directory (subject tree) and not a search engine.
Keywords
Keywords are most important to the success of promoting your
web site. We have already learned that keywords are query terms
that describe what is on your web page. They can be used in combination
to form keyword phrases. These words or phrases are the query
terms that search engine users use to locate information on specific
web pages on your site.
In order to best maximize your efforts; we need to think like
the users of the search engines. What words or phrases might they
type in to find your specific web page. Most people use keyword
phrases comprised of two or three keywords to search for a particular
topic or product. They do this because as we found out in exercise
1, they want specific information. If their search is to broad,
they either get too many or mostly irrelevant matches for their
query.
Especially in the beginning, don't use general keywords. Try
to be specific. If your keywords are to general, your chances
of being found are much more unlikely. For instance, in exercise
1 we searched for commercial real estate and got thousands of
listings but when we narrowed our search down to commercial real
estate Champaign, we got less than a half a dozen. You can be
successful with generic (general) keywords but be aware that it
is much more difficult to get top positions in the search engines
with general keywords.
Selecting Keywords
Here is a list of considerations when selecting keywords.
Be specific with your keywords
When you begin to optimize your site for keywords, start with
specific keywords and work your way over time to the more general.
As already mentioned, the more specific your keywords are, the
more likely that your site will be found. Depending on your keywords,
you may never achieve top ten ranking but with more specific keywords
your chances are much greater.
Use keyword phrases
As stated earlier, keyword phrases are simply multiple keywords
strung together to form a single query term. Keyword phrases allow
the person doing the search to narrow down his or her target topic
to a manageable number if listings. Just because the keyword phrase
is specific that doesn't mean that you won't get very many hits.
Many keyword phrases using specific words will generate thousands
of hits for you.
Put yourself in the customers shoes
Think like your customer. Ask yourself the question, "If
I were one of my customers (or potential customers), what would
I type in to find my particular page?" If it's possible,
ask your customers what they would type in to find your service.
You might be surprised what they might say.
Use a thesaurus and other periodicals
Look up your keywords in a thesaurus and you might find some
ideas that your never would have thought of. If you don't have
one, you can find one at your library, your bookstore or sometimes
there is even one in your word processing program. There are even
a few on the web. Try www.thesaurus.com.
If you belong to a trade organization, industry group or other
business related group, chances are that you receive periodicals,
magazines and other printed matter from these sources. Skip through
these to see what terms you might come up with.
Use your goals to select your words
Select your keywords in relation to your business goals. Use
your existing mission statement or business plan if you have one.
Write out a description of you business, the products or services
you sell, your objectives and market and use that material for
your inspiration. Sit down and brainstorm. Just start writing
everything that comes into your head. You can sort them out later.
Try association. What words do you associate with your keywords?
Use related words and ideas to guide you.
Consider common misspellings
Sometime people consistently misspell certain words. When typing
on the Internet mistakes are often made. Try typing your keywords
real fast on your keyboard so you make some mistakes. Other might
do the same. If you have keywords that are commonly misspelled,
try them. It might bring in more traffic than you think.
Use Regional Information
Don't forget to use regional information. Don't just use your
city and state as individual keywords but also make them part
of your keyword phrases. Many people search this way. Don't forget
this important way fo getting regional visitors to your site.
Think about word stems
A large percentage of the search engines use stemming or stems,
where the search engine searches based on the root word and variations
of that term. Especially if you are trying to narrow down the
number of keywords you will be able to use, consider this technique.
For example, add and "s" to make your words more accessible
in case people type in either the singular or the plural. For
instance, the words foods and food both contain the stem food
and the words teach, teaching, teacher, and teachers all contain
the stem teach. You get the idea.
Avoid Kill Words
Search engines ignore certain words because they are so common
that they just take up space and slow down searches. These words
are called kill words. You should avoid all kill words in your
keyword phrases. Common kill words are, a, an, and, at, by, for,
in, of, that, the, to, too, Web, and with.
Check out the competition
Look at the keywords that your competition is using especially
if they are getting top listings on the search engines. Don't
think that they won't do the same. Use the view source mentioned
earlier to see their meta-tags, which contain the keywords and
description that they are using.
Titles are Real Important
As we learned earlier, your title is very important for several
reasons. All search engines display the page's title so every surfer
will read it an make a decision whether to click on your link or
not. You want to have you keywords or keyword phrase in the title
because this is one of the major "weighting" techniques
that the search engine uses to evaluate the relevancy of you page.
The more relevant that it considers your title goes along way to
pushing your page's listing closer to the top. But there is also
another reason that you want to have the perfect title. You want
the surfer to click on your link once he or she sees it. Therefore,
your title must not only contain your keywords and phrases but it
also must sound appealing to the surfer. You need to use some salesmanship.
Salesmanship
It's a little hard to fit a sales pitch into just a few words
but it's worth a try. The maximum length of your title will vary
depending on which search engine you are optimizing. The maximum
length of the title will range from about 40 characters (Yahoo)
to 115 characters (HotBot). Below are the approximate maximum
lengths of titles allowed by each search engine:
· AltaVista - 78 Characters
· Excite - 70 Characters
· HotBot - 115 Characters
· InfoSeek - 75 Characters
· Lycos - 60 Characters
· Northern Light - 80 Characters
· WebCrawler - 60 Characters
· Yahoo! - 40 Characters
Let's say we need a title of 60 characters maximum. Which of these
two titles would you rather click on?
1.) James Burch Commercial Real Estate - Champaign Illinois Area
2.) James Burch Commercial Real Estate - Champaign's #1 Agency
Like I said, it's a fine line between writing for the search
engines and for the surfers but you should try. If the title wasn't
for the main page, which would require the business name, it would
be a little easier but you get the idea. Right? Both examples
would be very similar as far as the search engine rating but the
second title should be more effective because it's more persuasive.
When you are writing your title, try to put yourself in the surfer's
shoes. What would he or she most prefer to click on?
Another reason for keywords in the title
Yesterday, I was on the phone twice with representatives for goto.com
buying keywords for some of my clients who wanted them (we will
talk more about buying keyword in the next lesson). Even though
the search engine wasn't going to use the keywords in the title
for ranking (that's what you pay for), both representatives stressed
the importance of having my keyword in my title and description.
They said that their statistics show that the surfers are much
more likely to click on a link if the keywords are prominent.
They ought to know!
Think about these ideas while formulating the title and description
of your site:
Sometimes it's hard to he number one on the search engine hit list.
You might try hard and only reach number three or even lower if the
engine has a lot of paid for keywords in your category. If your title
and description are compelling, it makes up a little for being a little
farther down the list. After all, the people who are paying for those
keywords are probably rich and lazy anyway therefore their titles
will suck. Yours won't and you'll win the hits and the customers.
Your USP
In any advertising media, the importance of differentiating your marketing
message from your competitors is paramount. In 1960, the chairman
of an advertising agency named Rosser Reeves came up with a term he
called the Unique Selling Proposition or USP. The idea behind the
USP is that each advertisement must offer the prospect a specific
unique benefit. This benefit differentiates the company from all of
its competitors in the form of a proposition thus the term USP, Unique
Selling Proposition.
Since 1960, large companies have become that way by spending millions
defining, creating and perpetuating their USPs. What is your USP?
It's the thing that makes you different. It's what sets you apart
from the crowd. Offer your customers the ultimate advantage or make
a powerful promise. Be professional, but make your message as strong
as you can.
Two examples that emphasize the importance of effective titles and
descriptions follow:
Which do you think will prove most effective?
TITLE: James Burch Commercial Real Estate
DESCRIPTION: James Burch can help you find the business or commercial
property you need in Champaign Urbana.
TITLE: 10 Questions to Ask a Champaign Commercial Real Estate Broker
DESCRIPTION: An interview with James Burch, licensed Commercial
Real Estate Broker and life long Champaign resident. Learn how to
be in the "right" location and spend less so you can invest
more.
Here the UPS is a little hidden but it's there. Can you find it?
The title offers a benefit. Advice. It gives search engine users
a reason to click, to find out what questions they should ask and
the answers to those questions. The description builds trust (credibility)
and offers another teaser (benefit), to learn how to spend les and
get more. Who could resist? It screams that James Burch is the expert
you want to help you when you purchase commercial real estate in
Champaign.
Search the Internet for you keywords. Make a special note of which
titles and descriptions get your attention and those that don't.
Don't get to wild here though with your promises. You want them
to click, not to scare them off.
Analyze Your Title and Description, keeping in mind your USP. Think
about:
- Are your title and description attention getting yet appropriate?
- When a search engine user reads your page's title or description
will they feel compelled to visit your page?
- Are your title and description interesting? Will the search
engine user to want to learn more what you are offering?
- Does your title and description offer help to solve a problem
or reach a goal?
<TITLE> is one html tag you should learn
The Title tag (<TITLE>) is the most important HTML tag because
all search engines consider the keywords in the Title tag and give
these keywords substantial weight in their rating systems. Search
engines display the Title tag as the title of your web page on their
search lists plus it is displayed in the browser once the surfer
visits your page.
Luckily the html is very easy to learn. Although most web editors
have a little box somewhere you can change the title and most of
the time I enter it this way but many times it quicker just to type
it in.
It should be the first pair of tags after the initial <html>
tag. The format is <title>title goes here</title>. Jus
type your title between the two tags. What could be easier?
What about Multiple Keywords in your page's title?
Even though this seems like a good idea it can actually make your
site register lower on the hit list. Several search engines, Infoseek
and AltaVista for example, penalize pages that list keywords multiple
times within a single Title tag.
The problem is some search engines actually prefer two or even
more in the title. If are having trouble getting high rankings,
it might be because you have repeated a keyword in your page's title.
This is also true of the other elements of the page (we'll get into
that later) but in this case "more is not better". The
way I think of it is when a search engines counts to many words
it assigns you an X. Each X denotes a penalty of negative percentage
or so many positions down. The more Xs you get the farther down
the list you are pushed. The way I do it is I start out with the
keyword once in the title and if that doesn't get me the rating,
I'll add change it to contain a repeated keyword later. My rule
of thumb is, put the minimal (or optimum) amount of keywords in
each part of your page (I'll explain more about the other parts
in the next lesson). In some cases, you might find out that a one
keyword title yields a better rating, such as: <TITLE>Keyword</TITLE>.
Prominence
Prominence means how close a keyword is to the beginning of a title
(or within another page element). It's best to position your most
important keyword(s) or keyword phrase(s) at or near the beginning
of your title. This is what is known as "improving a keyword's
prominence."
The closer your keyword is to the beginning of a HTML tag, Web
page, or other HTML element, the higher the search engine will rank
your page during its database indexing process.
Tips for Writing Titles
As you probably realize by now, getting a high listing for your
web page can very competitive and is definitely worth understanding.
Understanding of the way the surfers and the search engines "think"
is typically the key to a successful search engine position for
your pages.
- Since you have more words to persuade and entice a surfer to
your pages, a longer title is often better.
- Don't overuse your keywords within a title (or in the rest of
your page).
- Place your most important keywords or a key word phrase near
the beginning of a title.
- Never be tempted into using text in ALL CAPS. This is considered
rude and annoying in the world of the web. It is tantamount to
screaming at someone. Plus, words in ALL CAPS are more difficult
to read.
Don't think you are in a phone book or dictionary.
You might think that starting your title with a number or the letter
"A" will improve search engine placement like in a phone
book or dictionary(arranged alphabetically). Search engines don't
give you a better rating for starting your tile with an "A"
or a "Z." They do give you a better rating if your keyword
starts the title though.
Directories are different though. Normally computers sort the alphabet
differently than you may think. The letter "A" does not
come first. A space comes first. It is followed by the characters
on the top row of keys on a keyboard, then by numbers, and finally
by letters.
Do it for real: Titles & Descriptions
- Create an effective title for your web page. Review the following
questions:
- Are your title and description attention getting yet appropriate?
- When a search engine user reads your page's title or description
will they feel compelled to visit your page?
- Are your title and description interesting? Will the search
engine user to want to learn more what you are offering?
- Does your title and description offer help to solve a problem
or reach a goal?
- Write at least five titles for your page; analyze and compare
them and put the one you think is best on your page.
- Write at least five descriptions for your site; analyze them
and choose the one you believe will be most effective. Review
the ideas from question one. Add the description to the meta tag.
Hint: <meta name="keywords" content="put
your keywords here">
- Resubmit your pages to the search engine you have been practicing
on to see what changes your new title and description make to
your placement.
Are You Ranked TOP 30
You have learned in this course that some search engines judge
your Web site according to the number of sites that link to it (its
popularity). You have also been working to establish reciprocal
links. You should work to establish additional reciprocal links
each week.
Frequently check the number of Web sites that link to yours. Increasing
your Web site's popularity is a process that is important enough
to warrant the attention of you or others in your organization on
a continual basis.
Increase Your Ranking
Have you made changes in all the suggested areas?
· Title tags
· META Description tags
· META Keyword tags
· Heading Level tags
· Anchor tags
· body text
· <IMG> tag ALT attribute values
· Comment tags
· Input hidden tags
- reduce the amount of text in your doorway pages to increase
keyword relevancy
- make the Title tag the first element in the source code of each
page
- do not make your keywords and keyword phrases too general
Consider these areas, as well as other areas outlined in the previous
lessons. Try to achieve a top 30 ranking for most of your Web pages.
Successful Web Promotion Strategies
Creating Top Ranking Pages
The following actions can help you improve your Web site's search
engine ranking.
1. Create short, focused doorway pages regarding a particular topic
that emphasize a keyword, phrase, or select group of keywords. Do
not allow a single doorway page to encompass several topics; keep
each doorway page focused on one point (keyword).
2. Begin your pages with the <TITLE> tag. Ensure that the
Title tag immediately follows the <HEAD> tag and is not placed
after other META tags.
3. Add META tags, particularly META Description and META Keyword
tags.
4. Add keywords to Comment tags. A Comment tag is used to describe
something within your HTML code that is not displayed within a Web
page. Some search engines do not consider Comment tags for relevancy,
but others do.
5. Add keywords to Heading Level tags. Do not make the mistake
of simply using a larger font size for your page's headings. Use
the official HTML Heading Level tags (<H I>, <H2>, <H3>,
etc.).
6. If your pages incorporate frames, use the <NO FRAMES>
tag to include 1) links to your other pages and 2) one or two sentences
describing your site (that include keywords).
7. Make the first words in the body text of your pages keyword
rich; many search engines focus on the first 25 words within a page
to determine relevancy.
8. Add keywords to your hyperlinks that link to your other pages.
9. Add keywords to <IMG> tag ALT attributes. In some cases,
Web viewers with older computers or slow Internet connections turn
off images, resulting in viewing Web pages with no pictures or graphics.
The purpose of <IMG> tag ALT attributes is to describe these
pictures. Use the ALT attribute to your advantage by inserting your
keywords, either after you describe the pictures or simply by themselves.
10. Determine your page's keyword weight. Count both the number
of times you use a keyword and the total number of words in the
viewable text of each page. (Hint: you can cut and paste the viewable
text of a Web page into your word processor to easily count for
you.) Then, divide the number of occurrences of your keyword phrase
by the total number of words on your page. The result is your page's
keyword weight. For example, if you use your keyword phrase five
times on a page and there are 50 words on the page, your keyword
weight is 10%.
Try to maintain a keyword weight of between 3% and 8% (note that
different engines have different preferences regarding keyword weight).
11. Resubmit your page if you need an extra boost in ranking. Several
search engines are known to score newly submitted pages slightly
better. You might make a minor change, such as changing the "last
revision" date at the bottom of the page, so the content is
considered new by the search engine's spider.
Optimize Your Pages
When you optimize your pages for a search engine, you are actually
optimizing your pages based on that search engine's ranking criteria
(indexing scheme). This means that what you do to improve your ranking
in one engine may actually harm your ranking within another.
After your pages are optimized and submitted to the appropriate
search engines and you are pleased with your rankings, continue
to check your rankings as frequently as possible. If your rankings
slip, attempt to determine why and make the necessary changes.
Continue to tweak your Web site; the difference that a professional,
successful Web site can make to your business can be remarkable
(and displayed prominently on your bottom line).
Need to Block Spiders from Indexing Your Site?
If you have reasons to want to block search engine spiders from
indexing your site, read Robots Exclusion at:
info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/robots/exclusion.html
In brief, the META Robots tag allows you to specify that a particular
page should not be indexed by a search engine. An example of a META
Robot tag appears below.
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX">
The only problem with this tag is that not all search engines support
it. As an alternative, all the major search engines support the
ROBOTS.TXT convention of blocking indexing.
Use Software to Track Site Traffic
Common ("C") logs, or referrer logs, are important to
Web designers. These logs provide valuable information regarding
the visitors to your site. Most Web servers provide C logs, but
you may have to ask your Web hosting service to establish this service
for you.
More Success Strategy Information
FrontPage 97 and 98, Microsoft Word, HoTMetal, PRO, and other HTML
editors insert the < T I T LE > tag after other, less important,
ME TA tags. This can hurt your Web site's rankings. Always check
the HTML code generated by these editors; if your HTML editor is
inserting its own tags (which are basically advertisements for the
HTML editor itselt), simply delete them.
Factors Regarding a Successful Your Web Site
Regretfully, the length of this course does not allow the review
of all factors regarding successful Web site promotion. However,
remember the following points:
· update your site on a regular basis
· check often for broken links
· add new material to your site (entice your visitors to
return often)
· offer sales and promotions
· ensure that your site hierarchy and navigation scheme
are simple
Check Links of Your Web Site
NetMechanic can locate broken links at your site (free of charge).
You can also subscribe to the NetMechanic services. For a fee, it
will monitor your Web site 24 hours per day.
www.netmechanic.com/link?check.htm
Improve Your Search Engine Ranking
Search engines sort, or index, web sites and pages in their databases
according to the keywords contained in each page. Because of this,
it is crucial to ensure that the keywords you have chosen are implemented
throughout your site (on each page).
Consider this: people visit search engines to locate information
or specific Web sites. They enter keywords or keyword phrases to
fine?tune their searches. Search engines then sort through the web
sites in their databases according to the keywords contained in
a web site in order to produce the search results (hit list).
Relevancy
As you learned in the previous Lesson, the frequency with which
your Web site is listed in a search engine's hit list and its proximity
to the top of the hit list is called relevancy.
Relevancy is determined by two primary factors:
1. The exact keywords by which each search engine indexes your
site and references pages from your site during a user query (search)
2. The frequency with which your keywords are searched for by users.
Regretfully, relevancy criteria differ from one search engine to
another. This is another reason why it is so important to be familiar
with the unique features of each major search engine.
If you organize your keywords in a consistent manner with a search
engine's relevancy criteria, your ranking with that particular engine
will improve.
Relevancy Criteria
Prominence of your keywords: Ensure that your title and/or
description begin with one of your keywords. Sometimes it is difficult
to write an effective title and description by beginning with your
keyword phrase, but doing so is worthwhile regarding the relevancy
of your Web pages.
Frequency of your keywords: Try to include your keyword several
times in the title and description, but do not get excessive. Some
search engines will penalize you if you repeat a keyword too many
times (this is called keyword stuffing). Be sure to read each search
engine's submission guidelines.
Repetition of your keywords: Repeat keywords in a Web page
as many times as possible (up to 3?7 times in each META tag).
"Weight" of your keywords Keyword "weight" refers
to the number of
keywords appearing on a Web page in relation to the total number
of words appearing on that page.
An effective technique: create several smaller pages gust a paragraph
each) which emphasize a particular keyword. If you keep the overall
words on each page to a minimum, you will increase the "weight"
of each keyword.
Proximity of your keywords Keyword proximity is the placement of
keywords on a Web page in relation to each other. For example, the
phrase "stained windows" will outrank a page that mentions
"stained glass windows" when the phrase for which a user
is searching is "stained windows."
Keyword placement on a page The exact location of your keywords
on a page is very important. Keywords placed in the title of a page
or the heading have more relevancy. In some search engines, keywords
in Anchor tags (links) add more relevancy to a page.
Site popularity One measure of a site's "value" is the
number of other Web sites that link to it. This is why you should
solicit other sites to link to yours. Consider requesting reciprocal
linking: if you link to others, they may agree to link to you.
Placement & Weight
Do not provide detailed product or service information on your
home page. Instead, design 1) a page for each product or service
that contains a brief description of the product and 2) a link to
that page from your home page (or main products/services page).
This will allow you to be more specific with your keywords for each
product page and increase the "weight" of the keywords
contained therein.
Determining Keyword Weight
How can you determine your page's keyword weight? Count the number
of times you used the keywords and the total number of words in
the viewable text of your page. Divide the number of occurrences
of the keyword phrase by the total number of viewable words.
# keywords / total # words = keyword weight
Web page keyword weight formula
To save time and effort, you should copy and paste the viewable
text into a word processor and have your software perform the counting
function. In Microsoft Word, this function is found under File,
Properties, Statistics.
If you use your keyword Phrase five times on the page, and there
are 50 words on the page, your keyword weight is 10%.
Optimal Keyword Weight
A rule of thumb regarding keyword weight: maintain a keyword weight
of between three and eight percent. Note that different search engines
have different keyword weight preferences.
· The location (proximity to top of page) and frequency
of keywords affect your search engine ranking.
· You need to include keywords in as many places as possible
to affect your site's relevancy in search engine rankings.
Keyword Placement
Below are the areas of a Web page in which keywords can?and should?be
positioned:
1.) Keywords in Title tag : <TITLE>Parkland College: The
Leading Vendor of High Quality Internet Training Materials< /
T I TLE >
You can sometimes gain an advantage by including more than one
<TITLE> tag on a single page. However, some engines ? such
as AltaVista and Infoseek ? will penalize your page if it contains
more than one <TITLE> tag. Therefore, you may desire to avoid
the use of multiple Title tags in a single Web page altogether.
2.) Keywords in META Description tag : <META NAME="DESCRIPTION">
3.) Keywords in META Keyword tag : <META NAME=" KEYWORD">
4.) Keywords in Heading Level tag: <H2 >Our Products</H2>
5.) Keywords in opening Anchor tag (link): <A HREF=http://www.ddcpub.com/<keyword>.htm>
6.) Keywords in page body text: Because some search engines retrieve
the first few lines of your Web page to describe your site on a
hit list, be sure to insert a number of important keywords in the
first few lines of the text on your page.
7.) Keywords in ALT value of <IMG> tag: <IMG SRC=model.jpg
ALT="Tire Cleaning Supplies">
Web designers use the ALT attribute value to describe an image
1) that is in the process of being downloaded or 2) when a user's
mouse hovers over the image. Adding keywords to ALT attributes will
increase the relevancy of your pages in those search engines that
recognize ALT text.
8.) Keywords in Comment tag : <! ?? insert keywords here ??X
Several of the important search engines (such as Infoseek and AltaVista)
do not consider Comment tags for relevancy. However, you should
utilize Comment tags for the many search engines that do.
9. ) Keywords in Input Hidden tag: <INPUT TYPE="HIDDEN"
NAME="HIDDEN" VALUE="insert keywords here">
10.) Keywords contained in URL site address: www. hotsauces. com
Must you make changes in all categories listed on the previous page?
No.
In fact, you may desire to test the effectiveness of the individual
categories by making changes in just a few areas. This will allow
you to note how these changes affect your ranking before making
additional changes. In this manner, you can more easily understand
what works and what does not.
More <META> Information
Additional information regarding META tags can be found at the
Search Engine Watch Web site on a page titled How to Use META Tags.
This page can be found at: searchenginewatch.internet.com/webmasters/meta.html
Factors That Affect Ranking
Assume your site is comprised of 1,000 pages. Remember the following
rules:
· You should include META tags on every page.
· Submit all of your important pages to each search engine
(do not rely on spiders).
· Manual submission of pages ensures faster indexing.
Size of Graphics: If your page consists primarily of images
and graphics, be sure to use META Description tags and META Keyword
tags to describe the page.
Colors: Some search engines penalize you for "hiding"
words on a page by using the same color for text and background.
Overall Layout: Keyword prominence may be affected if an
image appears before body copy on a page. You should place text
before graphics. Some search engines assign weight to the first
25 words on a page. In most cases, the first words receive better
ranking than the last words.
Words as Graphics: GIF or JPEG files that spell out a word
or words.
JavaScript: can reduce your ranking because it pushes your
keywords down a page.
Dynamic HTML (DHTML): Dynamic HTML, generating pages via
CGI, and database delivery typically have a negative effect on
rank because search engine spiders do not interpret
them well and often cannot index them. Consider
creating static pages when possible, perhaps updating
pages with a database (but not generating them).
Tables: Remember that tables can "push" your text
further down
the page, making keywords less relevant because they
appear lower on the page. This is because tables "break
apart" when search engines read them.
URL Address Avoid symbols in your URLs, especially the "?"
symbol.
Composition: Search engines do not interpret symbols well.
Exercise: Analyzing Your Site Popularity & HTML Code
1. Gauge the popularity of your site by determining the number
of outside Web sites that contain hypertext links to your site.
Visit AltaVista (www .altavista.com and type your URL into the query
field?without the "www" (domain name prefix), as follows:
link: yourcompany. com (i.e. "link:quessing.com")
2. Study Infoseek's submission guidelines in the Appendix. Also,
read Infoseek's submission guidelines posted at the Web site (www.
inf oseek. com). In order to submit to any search engine, you must
know and understand that engine's quirks and preferences. Guidelines
for AltaVista are also available in Appendix A: Alta Vista Submission
Guidelines.
3. Your main assignment is to analyze the HTML coding of your own
site and determine what changes should be made based on the keywords
you have chosen during this Lesson and important relevancy factors.
When you have determined the changes that need to be made, make
the changes.
Consider adding keywords in the following sections of your Web
pages:
Title tags META Description tags META Keyword tags Heading Level
tags Anchors tags Body text of page (any text between opening and
closing Body tags) <IMG> tag ALT attribute value Input tag
hidden text URL/site address
Tips for Positioning Keywords
Position keywords toward the beginning of titles, heading levels,
and descriptions.
Ensure that your Title tag is the first tag on your page. Some
HTML editors default to inserting tags before the Title tag. Check
your source code; if your HTML editor does this, delete such irrelevant
tags.
Make your title long, but do not repeat your important keyword(s)
in the Title tag more than once?this is very important (for many
search engines [Infoseek, AltaVista]).
Reduce the content of your home page if it is long by creating
several smaller pages.
Try to include keywords and synonyms of your keywords throughout
the text of the page.
Remember the importance of keyword proximity and try to keep your
keyword phrases together.
Resubmit all of your pages to Infoseek. If you have more than 50
pages, split your submissions over the course of a few days. If
Infoseek does not seem to be working properly, use AltaVista. Study
AltaVista's submission guidelines in the Appendix.
5. Check your current ranking by running a search for your keyword
phrases in Infoseek (or AltaVista). Because it takes 1 to 2 days
for a site to be indexed in Infoseek, you will probably be moving
on to the following Lesson before you see these results.
How have the changes you have made affected your ranking in Infoseek
(or AltaVista)?
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