Optimizing means developing and designing your web pages so that your site ranks high for the information you provide. While each search engine uses different approaches to evaluate and rank your site, there is a set of general principles you'll want to incorporate into your web pages.
Web pages have four key elements:
TITLE - These are the words that form the visible title of the page at the very top of your browser and are also the words that are saved when you save the page under your favorite links
DESCRIPTION - these are 25-30 words that are hidden with a page's code that describe what the page is about to a search engine
KEYWORDS - these are the 5 or 6 word combinations hidden with a page's code that someone might key into the search field in Google or other search engines
CONTENT - what the person actually sees on the screen
Our goal is to make sure that that words and phrases that best describe your site are mentioned in each one of these four areas.
let's look at an example - www.bernieschmidt.com (this page)
If you are using Microsoft Explorer, the way to look at the programming code or "source code" is to go to the task bar, click on "View", then click on "Source". What you'll see (in part) in this within the "Head" section of the page:
<HEAD>
<TITLE>bernie schmidt - Search Engine Article Part 1</TITLE>
<META NAME="description" content="bernie schmidt - Making your Web site search engine friendly">
<META NAME="keywords" content="bernie schmidt, search engine, web page">
</HEAD>
As well, if you read the web page itself, ( the "<BODY>" section) you'll see that these words are used again and again, so when the search engines index this site, they see that there is great relevancy and alignment around all four areas - the search engine will be convinced that this site is about bernie schmidt and web page optimization.
In setting up an optimized page that ranks well, the biggest challenge is finding those word combinations (key words) that are not over-used in your specialty or topic of interest that you're promoting on your site. For example, let's say you are an expert in evaluating antiques and you want to promote your evaluating service to antique buyers via the Internet.
If I type into Google "antiques" I get over 8,000,000 web pages that use that word.
If I type "antique evaluations" I'm now down to 23,000. If I type "antique evaluations in New York", I'm now down to 5,000 competing pages - the more specific the phrase around service and geography, the fewer competing sites.
Finally, if we take the rule of thumb that only 5% of web pages are properly optimized, then 5% of 5,000 is 250 web pages that are your true competition around the phrase "antique evaluations in New York" - much more reasonable than the initial eight million!
So, your first assignment in developing web page content is to
1) generate a list of phrases that apply to your business.
2) try out the phrases on a couple of search engines (Google and Yahoo each have about 30% of search traffic) - note how many sites have those phrases
3) check out the top 2 or 3 sites for each phrase and look at the source code (similar to what I showed in the "bernie schmidt" example). See if there are any other phrases that you think you might use
The goal is to come up with 2-3 phrases that really nail what you're offering and have as few competing websites as possible, but have enough daily traffic so visitors either 1) bookmark your site for future reference, 2) sign up for your newsletter or best of all 3) buy the service or product you're offering!
In the end, you're not looking for millions of people to find you - you want to have a regular, focused stream of people who are looking for EXACTLY what you have to offer.
To help you choose focused words with daily traffic but with (relatively) few competing sites, www.WordTracker.com is an excellent resource. You can buy one-day or one-week access to their database of keyword searches. I use this service regularly, beginning with lists of words that I come up with and then use their on-line thesaurus tools to expand the list to come up with keyword phrases that satisfy these three criteria:
Once your work on selecting keywords is done, you're now in a position to start writing up the four web page elements - Title, Description, Keywords, Content - for your Home Page and other pages.
Every page should use different keywords to reflect that page's content - that way you create more ways for people to find your site beyond your Home Page.
The basic page optimization presented here will go a long way to improving your site ranking. In Part 2, I'll discuss improving your site popularity and submitting to search engines.
All the best,
bernie schmidt
This article in its entirety may be copied and used, just so long as you include my attribution, copyright notice and website link.
As well, if you felt this article was useful, you can reward me by checking out my music! Thank you.
