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Page
Content
Relevant
content is the single most important ingredient for website optimization.
Without fresh meaningful content, there is little to interest
visitors to your website. Don't expect search engines to help
you with this. By design, search engines exist to provide consumers with
the best matches to the search terms they have entered. To be on
that list, your web page must contain content that exactly
matches, or is highly relevant to, the search term that the user
submitted in the search engine. Once the visitor arrives, your
web page content needs to attract and keep the visitor's
attention, otherwise they may leave your site as quickly as they
came in. To that end, you should make your page visually
attractive without being overly elaborate. In fact, if you rely
on elaborate graphics that increase your page loading time, you
will lose impatient visitors (especially those with slow
connections) that don't want to wait for your page to load. In
most cases, simple and clean is the best design strategy.
Also
keep in mind that search engine spiders read the text embedded
in your HTML code. Thus any image that gets pulled into your
page is read as nothing more than a reference to the image file
that is to be displayed. If you replace some keyword-rich text with a
fancy image file, the search engine spiders will no longer be
able to
read those keywords which can have a negative impact on your
overall ranking. Alternative text (see "ALT Text for
Images" below) can help, but actual text is still a better
choice as far as search engine optimization goes. This is not to say that your site should be devoid of images, just that
images should not be used as replacements for
important text.
HTML
Tags
There
are several HTML tags that are looked at by visiting search
engine spiders. The three that can most impact your listing and
ranking in search engine results are the Title Tag, Description
Meta Tag, and Keywords Meta Tag. These three codes are all
placed in the Header section of your HTML:
Title
Tag - Example: <title>Cement
Mixers - Mobile concrete solutions for construction and
landscaping jobs</title>
The Title tag defines the name that your web page will
display on the top bar of website browsers. Search engines pay
special attention to the Title tag so it is important to
carefully optimize this element on each page of your website.
You can have up to 150 characters in the Title tag, but many
search engines will only display approximately 80 characters of
the title, so be sure to make the first 80 characters especially
descriptive, attractive, and relevant to the contents of your
page. Do not list only your keywords. You should include the
most important keywords for that page, but ensure that it is
presented in an easy-to-read sentence format. In defining the
Title tag, you can think in terms of "what would make a
good newspaper headline?"
Description
Meta Tag - Example: <meta name="description" content="Portable
cement mixers at affordable prices for sale or rent. Your
concrete solution for any construction project, large or small.">
The
Description Meta tag defines the contents of your page in a concise
paragraph between 50 and 200 characters in length. Do not go
beyond 200 characters as some search engines may penalize you
for that. Your Description Meta tag should be well-worded and
contain many of the important keywords that are relevant to your
web page. Many search engines will use your Description Meta tag
information verbatim in their search results page, so be sure to
provide text that will be appealing to a potential visitors that
are browsing search engine results, as they will likely take
no more than 1 to 2 seconds to determine whether to click on
your site or to bypass it.
Keywords
Meta Tag - Example:
<meta name="keywords" content="cement
mixer, concrete mixer, construction tool, landscaping cement,
mobile concrete dispenser, electric, portable, replacement drum,
twin shaft batch, towing tongue, integral wheels, tool rental,
tool leasing">
The Keywords Meta tag is a comma delimited list
of keywords and key phrases that help search engines match your
site to words and phrases that a search engine user types into
the search box. The Keywords Meta tag can be up to 1,000
characters in length, but 300 to 600 characters is considered
optimal.
A
common mistake is to use somewhat generic keywords and to use
the same keyword list on every page. Take the time to customize
your keyword list for each page of your website. The
words and phrases listed in this tag should mirror the content
and topics from your page. While many search engines have
stopped focusing on this tag, preferring instead to focus on the
actual page content, we still recommend that you include this
tag on each of your web pages and that you have it accurately
list the key words and phrases that relate to each page.
Warning:
Do not repeat the same word twice in a row on this tag. Even if
you use different variations (plural, capitalization, different
tense, etc). Many search engines will consider it spamming for
the same word to appear multiple times (i.e., "flag, flags,
Flag, FLAGS"). You can use the same word in different
phrases (i.e., "American flag" and "Canadian
flag" can be in the list) but even when listed in different
phrases, you should still avoid using that same word
("flag" in our example) more than 3 or 4 times within
the entire Keywords Meta tag.
ALT
Text for Images
Search
engine spiders can not read graphical images, but you can still
capitalize with your images by using the alternative text (ALT)
within your image code. Example: <img
src="image.jpg" height="320" width="400"
alt="Portable Cement Mixer at construction
site">
Note:
The ALT text must accurately describe
the image being presented, and ideally should contain keywords
or phrases that are relevant to your page.
Internal
Links
Search
engine spiders will follow the hyperlinks from your
submitted page (most often that will be your home page) and will
be able to index your entire website. It is important,
therefore, to have functioning hyperlinks on each page,
especially on the home page. If the spider visits your home page
and that page does not link to other pages on your site, then it
will look for external links to other websites, and follow those
links instead. If there are no
internal or external links, then it will be at a dead end and
only that one page of your website can be listed. We recommend that you include
some type of menu system on every page of your website. This not
only helps the spiders to properly index your entire site, but
also helps your website visitors to navigate within your site.
Note:
Most spiders are not able to recognize links built with Flash,
JavaScript, or image maps. If your page contains such links, you
should consider replacing those links with standard hyperlinks,
or perhaps you can add the standard hyperlinks in addition to
the Flash, JavaScript, or image map links.
Incoming
Links
When
you put an external link on your website, you are basically
endorsing the other website. There is nothing wrong with that.
Search engines like links and will not penalize you in any way
for having external links on your page. The website that you are linking
to, however, can benefit from
your endorsement. The exact same is true for you when other
websites place a link on their site that goes to your
website--you get an "endorsement" from that website.
Search engines and directories like to see other websites
linking to your website and will take that as a sign that your
website has content that is genuinely of interest to others.
(That is why we offer free submissions to anyone that provides a
link back to us.) Ideally, search engines like to see incoming
links from websites that are related to your own website
content. For our Cement Mixer example, search engines would
place higher value on an incoming link from a Home Builder's
website then they would on an incoming link from a Pet Supply
website. The popularity of the site providing the incoming link
is also an important consideration. Search engines place a
higher value on an incoming link from a large established
website then they do for an internal link from a small
low-volume website. Therefore, a link
back from Microsoft.com is infinitely more valuable then a
link back from your Aunt Betty's homepage. With internal links,
quantity is good, but quality is much better.
Website
Updates
Search
engines do not particularly like pages that never get updated. The belief
being that if a page changes frequently then it is
being well maintained and thus you get more favorable results
from the search engines. Even if you don't have any changes to
your site's content, we recommend that you at least update the
Title, Keywords, and/or Description fields every couple of
months. While you're there, take the time to re-read your
content and ensure that it is still timely and accurate. Even
minor refinements will reflect favorably with search engines and
will likely improve the page for your website visitors.
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