Here's how to Optimize your site for the Search Engines."
Article by: Paul Short

Optimizing your website for better search engine rankings requires some special knowlege and also takes a lot of time and hard work to be done effectively. This article outlines only the basic mechanics of website optimization. It is not meant to be taken as a total solution to getting your site listed higher in the search engine rankings.

Keep in mind the following main points as they are the basis for the whole article.

Focus: Your site should be focused on no more than three main keywords or keyword phrases for maximum results.

Content: Your site should be set up as a valuable resource of information on one particular topic. This is how you'll generate your keywords and phrases.

Uniqueness: Your site should offer something that no one else has. Concentrate on this as the theme of your site.

Ok, let's jump right into the meat of things.

Your Title

The main purpose of the title is to accurately describe what your web page is all about. It tells in a few words why a visitor is either on your site right right now, or why they should click on your site in a search engine listing. You could also look at it as your sites "Headline", and write it as just that, a headline.

Pick 3 main keywords or 2 - 3 keyword phrases and use them in your title, but make sure the title still makes sense and also offers the viewer a reason to choose your site. Be creative but keep it relevant and stress your sites theme. Benefits sell. Show the potential viewer the benefits right in the title.

How am I suppose to include all that in my sites title? you ask. Well, the most effective way is to do some research. Go to the major search engines and type in keywords and phrases that a potential viewer may enter if they were looking for the type of information your site is offering. Out of the top 20 or so sites that are listed, which has the most compelling title. In other words, what would make you want to click on their site.

Do this with several keywords and phrases, log the results on on paper for use later and move on to the next section.

Keyword selection

This seems to be the "Holy Grail" of search engine submission services and novices alike. The perfect keyword phrases. Although having the right mix of keywords is important, your goal is not only to get listed high in search results, but also to get the right type of people to click on your site.

Prequalifying your sites viewers will bring quality traffic, people more likely to take advantage of what your site has to offer.

With this in mind, write up a list of at least 25 keywords and/or phrases based on the info you gathered in the previous section on titles. Then take your list and cut and slash it down to no more than 3 keywords or phrases most accurately related to your sites content and purpose. These three keywords will be the basis for your whole optimization process.

They'll be used in your title, your META tags, the description and body copy of your pages and even in the ALT text of your images.

Meta tags

The two main META tags used by some search engines are the:

META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="your,keywords,here," META NAME="description" CONTENT="your description here"

They are used by some, not all search engines along with your sites title to index and rate your site in their listings and also to provide the viewer with the text that appears when your site shows up in search results.

META keywords:

Use your keywords here with the most important ones first. Use different variations like capitalized and lowercase, commonly misspelled words etc. all followed by a comma with no space after the comma and do not go over 255 characters.

META description:

Up to about 500 - 700 characters can be used here in the form of a short keyword loaded descriptive paragraph.

I cannot stress enough the importance of a good description that accurately describes the benefits of your site, uses all your keywords and phrases and also gives a compelling reason for the potential viewer to click on your site in the search results.

You see, your sites title is the headline, the keywords give the search engine spider the info on where to place your site in it's database and the description you provide is like the ad copy in a classified ad. Give the viewer a reason to click on your site, sell them on what your website has to offer.

Page Content

Again, focus plays a major role here. Your sites content should offer a wealth of free information in it's category. Once you have established the area your site is focused on it'll be easy to work your relevant keywords and phrases into the text not only to increase their frequency on the page, but also to be as descriptive as possible about what your site contains.

Right after the tag in your html, include a brief description similar to the one in your META tags. I know, this may alter the overall appearance of your page but it is well worth it because the search engines that do not make use of the META description often use the first text that appears on the page as the text that shows up in the search results.

How many times have you searched for something in one of the major search engines and the description appears with a jumble of html code? Not too appealing is it? You can counteract this by using an actual descriptive paragraph as the first text that appears at the top of your page. Right after the BODY tag and before anything else in the html code.

Body Copy

Again, if your site has the focus mentioned earlier, including relevant keywords and phrases in your body copy will come naturally when writing your pages body copy.

Your pages should be short and concise, no more than about 2 regular 8.5 X 11" pages if you printed them out. It is a known fact that the "Frequency" of relevant keywords and phrases within your overall text has a lot to do with your position in the search results. For example, if you have six short paragraphs on a page, make sure one or more of your keywords is mentioned at least once or twice in each paragraph.

Doing this will show the search engine spider that the content of your site is directly related to the title and description you gave in your html. It shows that your site is definitely on topic.

Alt Text

Although it is debatable whether the search engine reads ALT Text as page content or not, it's not a bad idea to use this anyway. When adding images to your site, you have the option to describe the image using alternate text, or text that is displayed if the image is'nt for whatever reason.

Instead of using "ball.gif" or "email.gif" as the ALT text for an image, use a phrase that is relevant to your sites overall focus and make sure that you include at least one keyword in each. This is just one more way to add more of your keywords to your page.

Trim down the toys

Yes. Java, frames and tables show off your ability as a designer but it does'nt impress the search engine spiders. This code in your pages may halt the spider program before it gets a chance to properly index your site, it may also decrease your text to keyword ratio, etc. My best advice would be to cut the fat out of at least the main page of your site, the one that you're trying to get listed higher.

Links on your main page.

Because most search engines crawl through links to other pages, make sure that at least on the page you're promoting, you have links to the other pages on your site. Many of the search engines now instruct you to only register your main URL and leave the rest up to them. So if you are planning on using doorway pages to improve your rankings, link to them from your main page.

Offer these doorways as text intensive descriptions of different aspects of your site, an information source if you will, rather than just a primer for the search engines. That way, even if your main page lacks in it's ability to get listed higher, the doorway page will take up some of the slack.

Link Popularity

Lately, this has been a major issue on the internet. From what I gather, it seems that search engines also rate your site in their rankings by how many other sites are linked to it. The idea is that the more sites linked to yours, the better of a resource your site would be on your particular topic for someone doing a search.

A lot of analysis has been done and it appears that this is now a major factor not only in getting a higher listing, but also in providing searchers with pertinent information in their area of interest.

So now you will have to also approach webmasters of sites related to yours and somehow get them to link yo yours. This may not sound easy and it's not. But again it all boils down to focus. If your site is an excellent resource and other webmasters consider it valuable info for their viewers, you should have no problem arranging a recriprocal link with at least some of them.

Start a resource links page or something to that effect and include a link to it off your main page. Not only will you be providing your viewers with links to more information, you'll also be further establishing your site as a resource center for your particular topic.

Conclusion

As you can see there are really no secrets or insider info on improving your rank in the search engine listings. Just a little know-how, ongoing research and a lot of hard work. It's not one key thing that you must do but a combination of several common sense techniques which all work together smoothly to help improve your ranking in the search results.

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Paul Short is the Internet's leading Website Optimization Specialist. To find out how to put Paul's Website Optimization & Search Engine Submission Services to work for YOUR Website, Email him at: pauls99@sprint.ca or contact him via his website at: http://ioptimize.netfirms.com
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