Search
Engines:
Search Engine
Optimization (SEO) for your Website
Search engines are what bring
your website traffic - in addition to other marketing strategies we will
talk about later. No traffic - no business, no money, period. No matter
how nice your website is, and even if it is the best website in the world -
if no one sees it, it is not working for you.
META tags, key words, page descriptions, "H1"
and "H2" tags, and many other issues make search engine optimization the
stuff of hundreds of books and much more than even what just a couple
website pages can cover. Start slow, take your time. Most reputable SEO
authorities say that quality content from your site is more important than
anything. Quality content will be what makes your site work. That quality
content, if you recall from our "Selecting Website Topics" page - is what
you KNOW about and find interesting.
Know that NO ONE really
knows the algorithms that Google or other search engines use (except of
course their search engineers - and they aren't talking).
A Few Key Issues:
1. Have a least 250 words on each
page
2. Use H1 and H2 (headline tags)
so the search engines know what you think is important on each page.
3. Liberally sprinkle your "key words" in the
text of your writing.
The number one resource
many people use:
The Spider
Simulator
"Spiders" are the robots that that search
engines use to survey your website. This site will tell you how you are
doing - and what to do to improve. This is my number one resource - and it
is free.
Another good source is Google -
just try: "Search Engine Optimization" and you will see thousands and
thousands of pages of good help (this pops up in a new window so you won't
lose this page). Most of the pages will have something to sell you, but are
usually loaded with good advice anyway.
Another good resource is
The Site Wizard - with good basic tips for
improving your Search Engine performance.
Following are Google's
recommendations for getting your site on their search engine:
When your site is ready:
-
Have other relevant sites
link to yours.
-
Submit your website to Google
at
http://www.google.com/addurl.html.
-
Submit a Sitemap as part of
our
Google webmaster tools.
Google
Sitemaps uses your sitemap to learn about the structure of your site
and to increase our coverage of your webpages.
-
Make sure all the sites that
should know about your pages are aware your site is online.
-
Submit your site to relevant
directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to
other industry-specific expert sites.
Design and content guidelines
-
Make a site with a clear
hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least
one static text link.
-
Offer a site map to your
users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the
site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site
map into separate pages.
-
Create a useful,
information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately
describe your content.
-
Think about the words users
would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually
includes those words within it.
-
Try to use text instead of
images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler
doesn't recognize text contained in images.
-
Make sure that your TITLE and
ALT tags are descriptive and accurate.
-
Check for broken links and
correct HTML.
-
If you decide to use dynamic
pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every
search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It
helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.
-
Keep the links on a given
page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).
