Get Listed: Three areas of focus for webmasters.

Getting listed in search engines is essential for market survival. Internet commerce has become a powerful influence on the success of every business whether you have a website or not. So what can business owners or anyone else who wants to be on the web do to become visual and available to the millions who peruse the web everyday?

The answer is complicated. Search engine algorithms are constantly changing in what they look for while crawling websites. Dozens of techniques and strategies must come into play through the design of the website. There are three key areas that will help develop a good standing with search engines to better natural (sometimes called organic) listings. These include content, links and Meta tags. These tips are not comprehensive; however, and represent a small portion of all that is involved in achieving good search engine optimization and rankings.

1. Good content and keyword density.

When developing your website you need good rich content that will help you stand out to both your markets and the search engines. In order to establish good content, you need to know who your audience is and what their needs are.

You will need to make a list of your target keywords and do a little research. Find out who your competition is for those keywords and find out which phrases have the least competition. For example, general words like “travel” or “finances” are too broad. Millions of sites show up in search results for general terms lessening your chances for good rankings. Instead, target two and three word phrases like, “Puerto Rico travel” or “personal online finances.”

Once you have established your target audience and keywords, you will have to weave your keywords into your content. There is an art to placing keywords throughout your content. You want your keywords to appear on the top of the page and in your Meta tags. Use keywords in headlines and titles on the page, making them stand out more. Users also like to see the keywords they were searching for right away so they know they have found something relevant to their needs.

Place keywords strategically throughout the content, but don’t over do it. There is a fine balance between having good relevant keyword usage and spamming.

Once your content is written, be sure that you use lots of text. Search engines are blind to graphics. Bruce Clay, Inc., a company that specializes in search engine optimization and marketing, recommends that each webpage contain at least 400 words of relevant content. Also, make sure all your content is well written. Using bad grammar, spelling, or exotic sentence structure will decrease your chances of pleasing the search engines.

2. Links

All Search Engines will analyze your links to help them rank your website and your web pages. You will want to run a link campaign in order to build your link popularity. When looking for websites to exchange links with, remember you can’t just get lots of links from anywhere and make it count. First of all, you want to link with good quality sites. The quality of your website will increase by associating with other high quality sites; the opposite is also true.

You also want to link only with sites that relate to your own. For instance, if you sell language learning software, you can trade links with travel and education sites. However, a link from a site that sells auto parts, no matter how good they are, will do you little good.

3. Meta tags

Meta tags can play an important role in your search engine results. Meta tags are sections of code in the header of your HTML code that are not visible to browsers. The tags, most importantly, the title, description, and keyword tags pass information to search engine crawlers about your website or web pages.

The title tag should be short and to the point, and should include the target keywords for that page. If you have several keywords in the page, choose the best two or three. The title will appear in the search engine listings and can be the reason users click on your listing over someone else’s.

The description tag should also contain keywords. It should also be to the point and highly relevant to the content on that particular page. Avoid using marketing language in these pages. Human–compiled search engines like Yahoo! look down on it.

Your keyword tags should include all the keywords relevant to that page. There is some debate about whether or not you should capitalize the words and in what order. Some say you should capitalize the initial letter of each word, and others say capitalization doesn’t matter. Do some research and find out which strategy works best for you and your main search engines.

The title, description, and keyword tags should work together for each page to confirm the relevancy of the page’s contents. All the keywords listed in your title and description tags should be listed in the keyword tag as well.

These are only a few methods that will help you develop a search engine friendly website. Many other search engine optimization techniques need to be incorporated into the design of your website for the outstanding results you need to boost your traffic. Several companies specialize in the optimization of websites if you need extra help.

Once your site is ready to go, you have to get it listed! To learn about search engine submission services, click here .

References

Sullivan, Danny (2002, Oct 14). Search Engine Placement Tips. Retrieved July 28, 2006, from SearchEngineWatch.com Web site: http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2168021

Bruce Clay, Inc., Search Engine Optimization. Retrieved July 28, 2006, from Bruce Clay, Inc. Web site: http://www.bruceclay.com/web_rank.htm