Search Engine Strategies: The Premier Event for Search EngineMarketing & Search Engine Optimization

Internet Marketing Expert

Search Engine Strategies

The most important strategy is to rank high for your preferred words on the main search engines. Search engines send robot "spiders" to index the content on your webpage, so let's begin with steps to prepare your webpages for optimal indexing.

1. Write a Page Title. Write a descriptive title for each page of 5 to 8 words. Remove as many "filler" words from the title, such as "the," "and," etc. This page title will appear hyperlinked on the search engines when your page is found. Entice surfers to click on the title by making it a bit provocative. Place this at the top of the webpage between the <HEAD></HEAD> tags, in this format: <TITLE>Web Marketing Checklist -- 29 Ways to Promote Your Website</TITLE>. Plan to use some descriptive keywords along with your business name on your home page. If you specialize in silver bullets and that's what people will be searching for, don't just use your company name "Acme Ammunition, Inc." use "Silver Bullets -- Acme Ammunition, Inc." Words people are most likely to search on put first in the title (called "keyword prominence"). Remember, this title is your entire identity on the search engines. The more people see in the blue highlighted portion of the search engine that interests them, the more likely they are to click on the link.

2. Write a Description META Tag. Some search engines include this description below your hyperlinked title, though many don't. This sentence should describe the contents of the body text of the webpage, using the main keywords and keyphrases used on this page. If you include keywords that aren't used on the webpage you could hurt yourself. Place those words at the top of the webpage, between the <HEAD></HEAD> tags, in a META tag in this format:
<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="Increase visitor hits, attract traffic through submitting URLs, META tags, news releases, banner ads, and reciprocal links">
When I prepare a webpage, I write the description first in a sentence or two, using each of the important keywords and phrases included in the article. Then for the keywords META tag, I strip out the common words, leaving just the meaty words and phrases. The keywords META tag is no longer used for ranking, but it is sometimes used for paid inclusion technologies. I'm leaving it in. Who knows when search engines will consider it important again?

3. Include Your Keywords in Header Tags H1, H2, H3. Search engines consider words that appear in the page headline and sub heads to be important to the page, so make sure your desired keywords and phrase appear in one or two header tags.

4. Make Sure Your Keywords Are in the First Paragraph of Your Body Text. Search engines expect that your first paragraph will contain the important keywords for the document. You don't want to stuff keywords here, however. Google expects a keyword density in the entire body text area of maybe 1.5% to 2% for a word that should rank high. Other places you might consider including keywords would be in ALT tags and perhaps COMMENT tags.

5. Make Your Navigation System Search Engine Friendly. Some lazy webmasters use frames, but they can cause serious problems with search engines. Even if search engines can find your content pages, they'll be missing the key hyperlinks exist that can get from the front page to every page in your site. A site map with links to all your pages can help, too. Be aware that some content management systems and e-commerce catalogs produce dynamic, made-on-the-fly webpages. You can recognize these with question marks in their URLs followed by numbers. Overworked search engines usually stop at the question mark and refuse to go farther. Some solutions might be URL rewriting, paid inclusion, and targeted content pages.

6. Develop Several Pages or Web Sites Focused on Particular Keywords. SEO specialists don't recommend using doorway or gateway pages any more, since nearly duplicate webpages might penalize you. Rather, develop several webpages on your site, each of which is focused on a different keyword or keyphrase. For example, instead of listing all your services on a single webpage, try developing a separate webpage for each. These pages will rank higher for their keywords since they contain targeted rather than general content.

7. Submit Webpage URL to Search Engines. Next, submit your page to the important Web search engines that robotically index the Web. Look for a link on the search engine for "Add Your URL." In the US, the most important are: Google, Inktomi, Alta Vista, MSN, Yahoo, and Tehoma. They feed search content to the other main search engines and portal sites. For Europe and other areas you'll want to submit to regional search engines.