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The Basics of Search Engine Optimizationby Walt Thiessen It's time to cut to the chase. Here are the basic concepts of web page optimization that every webmaster should include on every page of their website. If you don't include them, you are undermining your efforts to get better rankings, no matter how many backlinks you get from other websites. Let's look under the hood of the HTML code in your web page to see what we can find. Title tagThe Title tag begins with <title> and ends with </title>. You'll find it in the <head> section of your web page's HTML code. This is the most important hidden tag on your entire page. It should contain only your most important keywords for that page. If a keyword doesn't appear in the text of that page, it shouldn't appear in the Title tag. Here's how the Title tag appears for the page you are viewing right now:
By the way, in case you haven't figured it out yet, the Title tag is where most search engines get the wording for your web page's link as it appears in a web search. Key Tip: make sure each page has a different Title tag. It's amazing how many webmasters use the same title tag on all their pages. Then, they wonder why search engines don't spider all their pages. Duplicated title tags is one of the top reasons why this happens. Meta tagsThere are really only two meta-tags you need to worry about. These should appear in your <head> section of your HTML code too. You need a Description meta-tag and a Keywords meta-tag. Here's the way the Description meta-tag looks for the page you're viewing right now:
The other important meta-tag is the Keywords meta tag. Here's the Keywords meta-tag for the page you are viewing now:
Again, as with the Title tag, you want to make sure that none of your web pages have either the same Description or Keywords meta-tags. If they do, many search engines simply won't include them in their indexes! Good, Readable TextThis is an incredibly overlooked part of website optimization. Every keyword that is directly relevant to the particular web page should be included in the text of that page. It shouldn't be "spammed" in, meaning that you shouldn't be shoehorning it in as often as possible, as some SEO experts recommend. Instead, it should flow easily and nicely into naturally reading text. As a rule of thumb, make sure you have at least 200 words on a page. Search engines prefer pages that have text in reasonable quantities. Pages that only have a sentence or two can't keep up in the scoring. Pages that are loaded with images do poorly if there is no text included to support and define those images. Most importantly of all, your text needs to read well. It needs to flow as any normal writing should flow. The more natural it sounds, the more likely it will score well. Headline tagsIf you aren't using the headline tags on your pages, you're missing out on an important optimization strategy. The headline tags are primarily <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, and <h4>. They also have ending tags. For instance, the subtitle in red above that says Headline Tags is an h4 tag. The HTML code for it is: <h4>Headline tags</h4> The reason you don't see anything about the color red in that code is that I've included it in a css stylesheet file which is included in the page. However, I could just as easily have coded it like this: <h4><font color=red>Headline tags</font></h4> and I would have gotten the same result. Why use headline tags? Because search engines like 'em! But as with text (see the section above), don't just start cramming all your keywords into every headline on every page. Use them only where it makes sense to use them from your reader's point of view. That's what search engines reward the most. KeywordsThese are the words for which you want to be found in the search engines. Do NOT try to cram them into every one of your web pages! Instead, only include them on those pages where it makes sense to include them from the point of view of actually reading your pages! When you select your keywords, don't just think of the one-word and two-word keywords. Those are highly prized, and you'll find yourself competing with tens of millions of other webmasters for top positioning on them. Instead, go for three- or four-word keywords. For instance, if you make widgets in Long Island, NY, don't just try for the keyword "Widgets". Concentrate instead on scoring well for "Widgets Long Island" or something similar. You'll find that it's much easier to compete on keyword phrases that have more than two words in them than it is to compete on the shorter keyword phrases. Text LinksDon't forget the power of text links. Search engines can only read text. They can't read pictures or graphics or movies or animation. That's why search engines love text links so much. Not only do they contain text information that their spiders can read and process, but they combine that information with a way to get to another page, either off the site or within it. Either way, it's the most influential item of all the items we're discussing here. Make sure that your website's pages are well linked to each other. At a bare minimum, make sure that all the pages link back to the home page via text link. Where possible, link to as many of your interior pages from the home page as you can reasonably do. Javascript Links - A Big No-NoThe worst kind of links are javascript links. This is because search engines can't read them. Some javascript writers who create such links have come up with alternative ways to make them readable by search engines. This is laudable and definitely helps. However, even those altered javascript links don't hold a candle to text links when it comes to influence and search engine scoring. ConclusionBasic optimization is easy. It just takes a little thought and time, and it is well worth the extra effort. The search engines will reward you for your effort in the way the place your site within their listings. It's amazing that more webmasters don't take the time to do the work. ©2006 Dirt Cheap Advertising LLC All Rights Reserved
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