Search
Engine Optimization is a web design art. In a perfect
world, not one byte of code is written prior to in depth
web design planning. You will find a lot of information on this site
about our web design process.
STEP
THREE: Creating Pages Optimized for Search Engines
EVERY
PAGE needs a unique <TITLE> tag. One item we have
noticed on a lot of sites is that every page has the same title.
Some search engines will consider this as "spamming the search
robot" and not list the site at all.
Some
search engines read <META> tags; some don't.
Use them. Each page that you want indexed by the search engines
should contain a Description
Tag and a Keyword Tag. A Robot
Tag should indicate whether or not you want the page indexed by the search
engines. You can also use an ascii robot text file in your site's
root directory.
Look
at Search Engine Listings. You will notice a short description
about the site. Where does the search engine get that description?
Some search engines use the description tag. Some use wording
found near the top of your page. Near the top means within
the first 25 lines of code.
The
Yahoo Search Directory and the Google
Search Engine use the top code. Google
uses the Meta Description tag if you have one.
Let
me give you an example from the Online Little Rock site.
One page on the site is a directory of the Little Rock River Market.
The Meta Description tag says, "River Market District Directory
for Little Rock, Arkansas". The page description listed in
the Google search engine is word-for-word what was in the Meta
Description tag.
Yahoo has
this description, "River Market District Directory for Little Rock
Arkansas. ... The Little Rock River Market District is anchored
by numerous food vendors in Ottenheimer Market Hall at 400 President
..." Notice the first part of the Yahoo listing is the Meta
Description tag. The second part comes from wording in the top
25 lines.
On other
pages, Yahoo ignores the Meta Description tag and uses only the
top wording. What does this mean for optimizing your site? Plan
your wording for your Meta Description tag and the top 25 lines
of your site to be what you want Internet surfers to see.
Search
engine robots assess a page for its importance to the people who
use their search box. Robots like <HEADER> tags, bold
print, <ALT>
tags, keyword link text, and information.
The
robots look for the prominence of your keywords.
Prominence is how close to the front or top the keyword appears
in the information or tag.
It is
not our purpose here to lay out keystroke by keystroke what you
must do to optimize a web page or optimize a themed site. Optimized
pages are not created in just a few minutes. Also to be taken into
consideration is which search engine guidelines you wish to use
for your primary optimization design.
Our
primary purpose is to let you know we know how to optimize pages.
We also know that your success goes beyond search engine optimization.
Your primary page(s) must be submitted to search engines.
You
must discover and develop ways to promote your site
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