Web Page
Quick Tip:
Search Engines like to see sites that are growing. Make a plan for increasing the content of your site and frequently add information that would be useful to your target audience.
Tricking the Search Engines:
There are a number of tricks to improve placement in search engine ranking but these are typically fads that quickly go out of date as the search engines adjust for them. Since search engines can and do ban sites we strongly advise against attempting this.
Your best bet is to think about what the search engine ultimately wants to find when related to your topic ...and provide it to them.
Keyword Spamming:
Do not stuff your page with keywords where they do not make sense. Search engines can often pick up on this and if they don't, your competition may and they can report your site. You do not want to get your site banned from a search engine by trying something stupid.
Make keyword rich pages, but make them readable and valuable to the reader.
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Use our interactive checklist to order everything you need. OurShop Now will step you through the complete process. Use our recommendations or enter your own service providers.
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Web Page Optimization( updated 2004-10-16 )
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In order to properly optimize your site for the search engines you need to understand the priorities of the search engines themselves. This concept is restated in our Search Engines 101 page but most search engines have two primary goals; 1) Provide quality links for their users and 2) increase their own profits.
Since search engine profits relate to your search engine placement by making their service a quality product for their search users it benefits them to make their search engine result pages as relevant as possible to what is being searched. That sounds quite logical but in practice the search engine ranking programs need to continually be refined to improve faulty logic and to weed out web sites that are unjustly (whether through deception or not) taking advantage of the logic.
In the long run, what search engines are striving for is optimal content for the person doing the search. As a web site owner (or "content provider") our job, and yours, is to provide the best possible content for the browsing public and to convince the search engine programs that we have done so.
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Web Site Design:
Use proper HTML tags.
- Put a good <TITLE> tag on your page including your primary keywords and make sure it is readable and something your end user would find relevant.
- Accurately describe in your "meta description" tag what the user will find on the page. Be sure to hit the primary keywords.
- Include a full "meta keyword" tag (though this tag is currently less of a factor).
- Use proper header tags ( <H1>, <H2>, <H3> ) when possible and where it makes sense. Keywords in header tags appear to currently have weight in importance.
- Include "ALT" text in your image tags. Search engines don't read images so give them an alternative
- Provide quality content including your keywords where ever appropriate (using "bold" tags when applicable)
Quality Web Site Content:
Provide as much information as possible on the topic of your page while including the words people would type when searching for your content. Write the content of your page and review it to determine where you missed the opportunity to work in key words. Be sure that in this process you maintain the readability and focus of your topic. Remember that the goal is not to trick the search engines but to provide the best content possible while convincing an automated program that it really is the best content. Do as many rewrites as necessary.
Also consider breaking your content up into logical sub pages. A lengthy page can be confusing while a few sub pages allows you to focus on different keyword aspects of the main topic and to optimize for them.
"But all I am doing is selling widgets. I don't have any content!"
Ok then. Let's say that OurShop.com is a widget seller. We are going to have the following content pages:
- The history of widgets
- How to buy the best widgets
- What makes a good widget
- OurShop.com's history in widgets and why you should buy your widgets from us
Our goal is to create documents that will be helpful to people looking for widgets while giving our pages the best oportunity for keyword indexing in the search engines. We also want our content to be considered worthwhile by other sites so that they will link to us for this information. None of this, however, guarantees top placement or even that the pages are included in search engine listings.
See our web site traffic articles for more.
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