Internet Marketing Basics
Recently, one of our most important clients asked us for some advice on getting their Web site noticed on the major search engines. We spent the better part of an hour providing some basic insights on this topic, which as it turns out, is the basis for the next five articles in this section of the monthly newsletter. Although Prodigix is by no means an authority on Web site optimization, search engine submissions, and Web site ranking strategies, we believe that over the past two years we have learned a few things that might be of help to our clients.
Part 1
Preparing your Web site for Search Engines
You can have the ugliest site ever created and be in the top ten on a major engine. Search engines use "spiders" to scan your Web site so it can be indexed and ranked. The only thing that really matters here is that your site text, especially your home page, is rich in keyword phrases (the phrases people are searching for in the major search engines like Yahoo.com and Google.com), the TITLE and META tags (HTML code in your Web pages) that describe the content of the page, and a Site Map. Here are six things you can do to prepare your site:
1. Keyword Phrases - write down 10 keyword phrases that define your company or product offering. The more specific and unique that your product or company is, the easier it is to come up with these words. Think about your target audience and the keywords that they might enter into the search engine to find you. If you're not sure what phrases are going to be the most popular, you can use this great FREE tool found at http://www.wordtracker.com.
2. Body Text - Make sure that the most important keyword phrases appear in the main body text of you home page. The search engines compare this body text to your TITLE and META tags, then rate your page on how well these compare (among other things).
3. TITLE Tag - Your TITLE tag should include your single most important keyword phrase, for example:
<TITLE>Lose Weight</TITLE>
Don't worry about getting wordy here. That's what the DESCRIPTION META tag is for.
4. DESCRIPTION META Tag - Use this tab to describe more detail about the title, and be sure to include the keyword phrase in the "content" area that you used in your TITLE tag, for example:
<META http-equiv="DESCRIPTION" name="DESCRIPTION" content="Lose Weight using our guaranteed system of weight loss">
don't worry about the "http-equiv"; it's there for the benefit of the "spider."
5. KEYWORDS META Tab - This tag is where you want to list all of the keyword phrases that help define your page, including the most important one found in your TITLE and DESCRIPTION tags, for example:
<META http-equiv="KEYWORDS" name="KEYWORDS" content="lose weight, weight loss, guaranteed system, healthy eating, exercise system, natural weight loss>
The "content" section of this tag should include all keyword phrases that are found in the body text of your Web site The more relevant these key words are with your Web site's actual content, the better rating the search engines will give you.
6. Site Map - We didn't learn about this one until recently, but Google suggests that you create a Site Map that links from your home page. This page is simply an index page with links to all other pages on your site. The "spiders" like this because they can easily index your site with just two "jumps" - one jump to your index page, then another one to any other page. Using a Site Map page is also very good if all your links from your home page are dynamic in nature; if you are using Javascript or <SPAN> tags the "spider" cannot read your links. If the "spider" cannot read your links, it cannot index your site! If you want to see our site map, go here.
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Recommended Resource: www.SelfPromotion.com
Next Month: Part 2, Submitting to Search Engines