Search Engine Optimization for Your Web Site

Web site optimization or Search Engine Optimization, as it is sometimes referred to, is the process of planning, designing, and creating your web pages to attain high ranking in the Search Engine results. Your META Tags, Keywords, individual Page Titles, Image Alt text, textual Content, and overall design all play important roles in determining how your website's ranking. If your site is not in the top 10 or 20 results for an important keyword search at any of the major Search Engines, such as Google, Yahoo!, or MSN, your target audience will rarely stumble upon your site.

Normally, at least half of your website's traffic will come from searches done at the major Search Engines like Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. Typically, the majority of Internet users go to a Search Engine, type in a keyword phrase, and then browse through the top 10 - 20 results. Most of the time they'll find what they're looking for in the first 10 results. Listing near the top of the results for your major keywords and then getting your target audience to visit is a top priority.

Keywords and Keyword Phrases

A keyword or keyword phrase is a single word or combination of two or more words that captures the meaning of or describes your web page. For example, if your web page is about cars, then your best keyword would be "cars." If your web page is about red cars, then your best keyword phrase would be "red cars."

When planning, designing, and creating your web pages, you should try to focus on ideally one, but no more than two keywords or keyword phrases per page. It is almost impossible to create a truly optimized page for more than two keywords or keyword phrases.

Avoid focusing on one word keywords as they are usually too general or broad in scope and the chances of your ranking high in a search engine's results will be slim. Try to use phrases that narrowly focus in on your web page's content. If your web page is about cars that are painted red and go really fast, a good keyword phrase might be "fast red cars." But most importantly, try to put yourself in your target audience's place—by asking yourself—what will they be looking for? What keywords will they be using when they are looking for a site like yours? What words will they need to type into a search engine to find your site?

Choosing the best keyword phrases is the most important thing you can do when optimizing your pages for Search Engines.

Discovering and using unique keyword phrases is another great way to boost your rankings in a search engine's results. For instance, if your web page about fast red cars is even more specifically about fast red cars built by a specific auto maker, then using that auto makers name in addition to your keyword phrase of "fast red cars," will help to make your web page easier to find.

Overture provides a great tool for finding popular keyword phrases to use. Search Engine Watch also has a page called What People Search For - Most Popular Keywords that has links to several great places for doing some serious keyword research. And of course, Wordtracker is like the lion in the jungle when it comes to really getting down to business—they rule!

To take a peek at live action searches being done, the following sites can give you a glimpse:

<META> Tags

META tags are HTML code that is placed between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags and pass information through the browser and to the search engines about a page's content.

The META description tag contains a description of your site and is visible in some search engine results when one of your pages is returned in a search.

The META description tag for your site's index or home page should focus on your site's main topic or focus. META description tags on other pages should be specific to the contents of the page. Your most important keywords should always be as close to the beginning of your description as possible—preferably FIRST—and should describe your page in as much detail as possible. You want potential visitors to know exactly what they'll find if they visit your site, but keep your description to less than 200 characters, including spaces.

For example:

<meta name="description" content="Search engine optimization - optimizing your web site." />

The META keywords tag contains a list of the keywords and keyword phrases that are relevant to your Web page and hopefully help a search engine find you. Concentrating or focusing on just a few keywords or keyword phrases is the most effective use of the META keywords tag.

For example:

<meta name="keywords" content="optimization, performance, search engine optimization, speed, engine, search, optimization software, web" />

One place to find tools to help with developing a good keyword list is JimTools.

There's also an easy-to-use freeware program called GoodKeywords is also a handy little helper to have in your website optimization toolbox. It helps you develop a list of keywords for your website and includes a site popularity tool that lets you check your site's popularity.

But, far and away, our favorite collection of SEO tools is at SEO Tools.

CAUTION: Only use keywords and keyword phrases that are relevant and appropriate for your web page. Using keywords or keyword phrases that do not apply to your page or website is considered to be a form of SPAM and could get your website banned from the search engines.

<IMG ALT> Tags

Image ALT tags follow your graphic address or URL in your HTML or XHTML code. Older versions of browsers or visitors that have the graphics turned off in their browsers will see the words instead of the image. Optimizing your graphics involves inserting a relevant keyword phrase into the ALT tags of your images. Ideally, the words used in the ALT tag for the image should apply to the content of your page and also describe what the visitor would see if they were viewing the image.

For example:

<img src="seologo.gif" width="100" height="40" alt="search engine optimization logo" />

<TITLE> Tag

Your TITLE tag should contain your most important keywords or keyword phrase.

Your most important keyword phrase (the keyword phrase you think most people will use when they do a search) should be the first words of your title. And instead of capitalizing the first letter of your title, type it in lowercase—most people type in all lowercase letters when they search. Having the words in lowercase will more closely match the style of a search and will help you to rank higher in the search engine results.

Good TITLE tags include only relevant and appropriate keywords or keyword phrases. Try to avoid using what are called "stop" words like a, and, the, this, etc. These words are glossed over by most search engines and can actually cause a search engine to stop reading your page. If you must use them in the TITLE tag, try to use as few as possible.

<HEADING> Tags

HEADING tags are used to delineate and define topics and range from <H1>, which is large and bold to <H6>, which is small and bold.

Your page heading or title should always be encased in <H1> tags and should include your most important keyword or keyword phrase. You should then use the lesser heading tags to identify subsections or subtopics. Think of the use of heading tags in the same way you would construct an outline, with a title, topics, and subtopics. Heading tags assist the search engines in scanning your page's content quickly and identifying and cataloging key content. Any time you can help a search engine, it's not a bad idea to do so.

Oh, and by the way, don't forget you can control the size of your HEADING tags with CSS.

CONTENT - TEXT

CONTENT RULES! And if that could somehow be said even more emphatically, it would be appropriate. Content is the

MOST IMPORTANT PART OF YOUR WEB SITE AND ITS INDIVIDUAL PAGES. And as time goes on, it will become increasingly important. Let's face it, people use the Internet to find the things they want; search engines attempt to help them find what they want; for a search engine to be truly successful it would have to give each user exactly what he/she wants. To accomplish this, a search engine would have to accurately interpret a user's request and then match that request with exactly what the user asked for. And CONTENT is what users are looking for. So for a search engine to be successful it needs to accurately recognize and return good, quality, relevant content that matches a user's request. So this makes the website creator's job one of providing CONTENT that people want.

So Rule #1 is: GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT.

If you want to successfully optimize your content, find out what it is people want and then give it to them. And give them plenty of it—but not ALL on ONE PAGE. If you make your pages too short, the search engines won't like them because there will appear to be inadequate content. If you make your web pages too long, people won't like them because they have to scroll too much to read and the page will appear to be never-ending and people have short attention spans, and well, you get the picture . . . right? Your web pages need to contain plenty of text and each of your keywords and keyword phrases used in different variations, because if the search engines can't find all of the keywords and keyword phrases that you listed in your META tags—they will ignore them.

So, how often should your keywords and keyword phrases appear in your text? Ah, the magic question!

The most recent research indicates that three times for each is adequate and more than ten times is probably too much. Less than three times and the search engine may think the keywords and keyword phrases aren't really of much importance on the page and more than ten times and the search engine may suspect it's dealing with a page that's been stuffed with keywords to try and trick the search engines.

HTML, XHTML, and CSS

When choosing how construct your pages and the best code to use, opt for the combination of XHTML and CSS. XHTML is a hybrid of XML and HTML and is the current code of choice because of its flexibility and adaptability to multiple media formats. CSS gets most your style code off your page (this is a good thing) and, if properly implemented, makes your website much easier to maintain.

If you're not fully comfortable or aware of the possibilities and choices of codes and programming languages available for website-building, we highly recommend you visit W3Schools and make use of their free on-line tutorials. You'll be glad you did.

Basic Search Engine Guidelines

The following list of guidelines is just that—a list of guidelines. Every search engine is different and none of them share much information about the criteria they use to screen, select, and rank web pages for inclusion in their results. Besides that, their guidelines change regularly and it is impossible to keep up with the changes. Our advice here is, optimize your website, submit it to the search engines and directories, and then leave it alone. Once your site has been included in the search engines and directories, you'll find that time will be your best friend.

Here are a few basic general guidelines and suggestions to help you with optimizing your web pages:

General Optimization Guidelines and Suggestions

Titles and Headings

ALT Tags

ALT tags should contain a word count of about one to thirty-five and have a keyword frequency of one to two.

Hyperlinks

Hyperlinks should contain a keyword frequency of between one and eight.

Content - Body Text

Content or body text should contain a keyword frequency of between one and six, a word count between three and four hundred and a keyword prominence of about 50%.

An individual web page should contain a total keyword frequency of between five and twenty.

Words of Advice

Build your website for humans, optimize it for search engines. Manually submit your site to the major search engines and directories. Keep abreast of search trends and the shifting interests of your target audience. Optimizing your website is important, giving the people what they want is more important.

After all, what good is information if nobody gets it?