Posts: 22
Location: New Port Richey, FL
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I got this in an e-mail & thought it might be of interest to some of you. It's kind of long, but I found alot of information in this.
So, what is that search engines are looking for?
Well, each search engine looks for basically the same things.
They usually examine page titles, descriptions, keywords,
content and links. Of course, each search engine has its own
unique way of cataloging and prioritizing the information it
takes in.
In order to get your sites cataloged correctly and to have
any chance at a high ranking, you will want to take advantage
of each element that search engines examine. Let's take a look
at them:
Page Titles - Page titles are often overlooked by web
developers. Not only are page titles helpful to your viewer
by providing them with a brief description of the page, they
are also a very useful element to the search engine. In fact,
some search engines give the title more weight in the rankings
than any other element. Personally, I don't think giving
titles such weight is a good idea but I don't write the search
engines. Be careful not to make your titles too long, though.
Many search engines have a cap on the number of characters or
words they will read in a title.
Content - Content is what you would logically think to be the
most important component in cataloging a site since it
constitutes the bulk of the the information on the site. Most
search engines use the content as a basis for cataloging a site
by eliminating all common words like "an" and "the" and indexing
the rest of the content. Some will even add a ranking weight to
words in the content based on the number of times the word is
used. The logic is that the more times a word is used in the
content the more likely that word will be relevant to a web
surfer searching for that particular word. Be careful, though,
most engines are clever enough to spot ranking tricks like
hiding a repeating word at the bottom of a page. This trick used
to be implemented by adding an entire paragraph of a single word
to the bottom of a web page and setting the color of the font
equal to the color of the background. Since the web crawlers read
the actual HTML, they would see the words and rank accordingly
while the person viewing the page only noticed a bit of unused
space at the bottom of the page.
Hyperlinks - Search engines will also catalog and index your
hyperlinks. The cataloged hyperlinks are usually used in a few
different ways. First, they are used as a "road map" for the web
crawlers so they know where to search for new pages. Second,
they are used in the ranking system by giving more weight to pages
and sites that have the most links to them. Again, be wary of
trying a similar trick to the one described above. Most engines
will sniff out "cheaters" that add a bunch of hidden links to
boost their rankings. In most cases, "cheaters" will not be
cataloged or indexed at all and are simply ignored. Obviously,
you don't have much control over how many other sites reference
yours, but it gives you an idea of what is important to search
engines.
The next few items are in the form of meta data. Basically, meta
data is the information about a page that is purposely hidden from
the viewer. Meta data is intended to be used by search engines and
browsers do not display it.
Description - This is exactly what is says, a description of your
web page. This is primarily used to describe your page when it pops
up on a search engine. If you do a search on most any search engine
you will notice that each page listed has a description underneath
the link. That description is taken from the meta data description
on the page. You also might notice that the descriptions are often
cut short. Most search engines will only dedicate a few lines to
the description. This doesn't mean you should only write a short
description but rather quite the opposite. Your page descriptions
should be as long as necessary to be complete. Though they may not
be completely displayed on a search engine, their content is used
for both indexing and cataloging. The two best rules for writing a
description are:
1. Be thorough. Write a complete summary description of the page.
2. Make your lead sentence a short easy-to-read summary of the page.
Since you only get a short space for a description on most search
engines, make good use of that first sentence. It may be the only
one that viewers see. You have the rest of your description to go
into more detail
Keywords - Keywords are a very important meta data component. They
allow you to specifically define words that apply to your web page
rather than relying on the search engine to figure it out. Here are
some good basic rules for determining your keywords:
1. Come up with a complete list that describes your web page and then
prioritize it. List first the keywords that you would like to have
the highest rankings and then work your way down to the least
important. This doesn't necessarily mean that you will be ranked
high under the first keyword that you list but it does mean that the
search engine will definitely catalog and index it. Also, many search
engines put a cap on keywords. Since we don't know for sure what the
cap is with each search engine, prioritizing your keywords is a must.
2. Allow for misspellings. If you want your site to appear consistently
for a keyword, be sure to include any common misspellings of words.
Consider possible typos as well.
3. You don't need to really worry about plural words, like listing
computer and computers. Most search engines will ignore the plural
when both searching and indexing anyway.
4. No need to duplicate words. For example, if you have three phrases
that best describe your site and the all contain the word "computer",
you don't need to spend time entering "computer" into each phrase.
Most search engines break up keywords by the word and not the phrase
anyway which means that duplicating a word in a phrase won't do
anything for you except take up unnecessary space.
That's all there is to it. Here's an example of where to put your meta
data:
<HEAD>
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="This s a description of my web page.
You should come visit sometime!">
<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="computer,web,home,personal,John,Doe">
<TITLE>Welcome to my personal web page!</TITLE>
</HEAD>
Using the elements outlined above will help you get noticed by most
search engines. Spending time to prepare your pages well before
registering them with search engines will go a long way towards getting
and holding those high rankings.
What about those services that promise high rankings?
While some of those services are well worth the money, many are not.
If your site's success hinges on a high search engine ranking, then a
search engine optimization service is probably going to be just what
you need. Just be wary that the service you are paying for is not a
"take-your-money-and-run" scam. The internet is full of them.
If a high ranking is not that important to you then optimizing your
pages yourself and waiting for the web crawlers to come your way will
probably be good enough. You might also try registering your site with
the just the major search engines. That will often get the ball rolling
and get you listed on the more minor search engines.
Should I take the time to prepare each page for search engines?
That depends on your situation. Many sites want all visitors to funnel
through their home page and will therefore only optimize that one page.
If your site is one that has multiple semi-independent sections you
might want to optimize other pages within your site. Optimizing every
single page of a site is usually unnecessary, though.
Sorry for the long post. I just hope it was helpful to someone.
Jane
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