Search engines are a easy way to find nearly anything. Most of us use search engines every day; we look for information about infinite things from astronomy to zircons. We use search to find new places to live, plan vacations and - of course - find games to play.
Some of us look at search engines in other ways … we desire people to seek out and find our content, our web pages and wares. If you are like me, you spend a huge amount of time to promote and market your website so it gets better rankings on search engines.
No matter what it is you want to do or promote, these tips will help you to get more potential customers to your site. There are some factors you can’t control; the age of your site is one of them. Having mentioned that, there are two things to pay attention to. Most important, your web sites have to be written in a way that will satisfy search engines; the second is to get other websites to link to your content. This article is mostly about “on page optimization”, in other words creating pages websites search engines like to include in search results.
I am a jewelry designer. I make handcrafted jewelry. I have been marketing my handcrafted jewelry online since 1998. Since that time I have learned a lot about search engine optimization. There are a lot of things that go into a well designed page; and you should include as many of these parts as you can to inform search engines why your page should be indexed and easily found.
Search engines employ retrieval programs they use to discover, index and rank web pages called “robots” or “spiders”. These software programs “crawl” the web, following links from page to page transcribing what they find in a database. Every search engine has a unique algorithym; these are the requirements websites have to meet to be included.
First try to do some research to find out what search terms you need to build your pages around. If your website provides cosmetics, bath products and fragrances try to find out what shoppers look for to find those things. The best way is to have a few family members search for your content with you watching; make a note of what they type into the search engine box. Keep them for use as your keywords or search phrases. Don’t search for the name of your site for this; only the things you have to offer .
One of the most significant parts of the page is your title. The title shows up in the blue bar at the top of your browser window. It should clearly list what you sell or what your site is about. You have about 40 characters to format if you want the entire title to show in search results. It can be longer; but only the first 40 or so characters will be displayed. Put your primary search keywords near the beginning.
Generally, you need about 500 - 700 words on the page for SEO purposes. This includes your page body text, but also visible image captions, text links, and any other text you’ve included in the header or footer portions of the page. The more text you give search engine spiders, the better … they read text, and can tell what your document is about by scanning what you’ve written.
On the home page you can usually mention your most important search term once in the title; once in a Heading 1 headline; once in a Heading 2-6 subtitle; once in an Image Alt description; one time in bold text; and in a text link to an inner product page or a subscription form. Be careful not to overdo it in your website’s body text; mention your chosen keywords just one time for every 100 words. Follow this guideline for each of your keywords if you can.
Keep it simple by using brief paragraphs and sentences. Break paragraphs up if you have to. Create an easy to comprehend web page.
Things to stay away from are just as important. One of the most important is that search engine bots only recognise text. Graphics appear to be big, empty, blank spaces on a document to a search engine spider. Use these elements further into the page; be certain to use the Image Alt tags to describe your pictures. Flash intro pages are attractive, but you’ll have a hard time obtaining great rankings if that’s all you have on your index page.
It is imperative to put every search phrase included in the Keywords META Tag on the document as visible text, preferably included in a sentence that is part of a larger, relevant paragraph. Context does make a difference; your search phrases must be surrounded by text that makes sense. Search phrases in the keywords tag that aren’t on the page can result in the web page being banned from the search results. Visible text means just that - not too tiny to see and not the same tone as the background of the page.
Remember - your best advantage is content. Make it current and informative, and you must make it original. This is what search engines look for! If you provide value on a consistent basis your pages will be visited often and you’ll notice an improvement in your rankings.
Robert Edwards is the webmaster of a popular shopping site offering handcrafted silver jewelry and custom made silver chains. This article may be reproduced on blogs and websites provided all links in the article and this author’s statement remain intact.