search engine optimization

Search engines like Google or Yahoo can send many more visitors to your Web site, if you give them a little help.

There are four things you or your Web site developer can do to very quickly make your site more "findable" for Google, Yahoo, and the other search engines:

Keyword optimization

A descriptive title

A proper text heading

Properly-written text content

To do any of these effectively, you must first be clear on who your target audience is and what is the purpose of your Web site. The more focused you can be, the better.

Keywords are the most misunderstood of the three topics. To understand why, you need to know about meta tags. These tags are text snippets that are buried in the code for your page. You can see the keywords and other meta tags for any site you visit by clicking on View>>Source in your browser toolbar. Major search engines like Google and Yahoo used to use the "keywords" tag as an aid to indexing your site. Most no longer do so, because of abuse of this feature by unscrupulous Web designers.

Here is what the tags for this site look like:

Note that I continue to use the "keyword" meta tag. I do this on the off chance that an obscure search engine still pays attention to them. Nevertheless, the concept of keywords is still useful, because you will use them in the content of your Web site.

You will also note that there is a "description" tag. The search engines do still use this tag to create a description of your site in their search results. You will want a concise, focused overview of your product or service in the tag.

We've all heard of the "elevator speech", that is, a 1-2 minute talk about who you are and what you do that is simple to understand, intrigues the listener, and asks for an action. Think of keywords as that speech, boiled down to a group of 3-6 words that describe your product or service to your target audience. Search engines can help you find the right keywords. Google, for example, provides its Adwords tool. Visit google.com and do a search on "adwords" to get started on your research. You will incorporate these keywords into your description, title, headings and text content.

Titles provide a description the search engines often include with the link to your page. Again, the title is created in the page coding; however, it it is visible in the title tab in your web browser, (see figure left) and it is what your Web browser uses to bookmark your page. Much more than saying "home page" or the like, your title should be a summary of who you are and what you offer in as few words as possible. Think of it as your web site's business card. Use your keywords research to decide what the title should be.

Here is an example of how Google uses the title and the description tag in the search results for this page:

google search results

Headings are descriptive titles within the text on your page. Keep in mind that no search engine can index text that is contained in a graphic. So if, like me, you choose to put your company name in a graphic logo at the top of your page, you need to also place the name in the title and in the text of the page. You should format your company name and, if possible, two or three descriptive keywords, with the H1 tag. This is a coding tag that is used to format headings with a unique typeface, size, color, etc. And, Google looks for this tag to help them index your page. For example:

<H1>jack arnold communications</H1>

Text Content should, ideally, incorporate the keyword phrases you have chosen for titles and headings. doing this accomplishes two things: it helps you focus on your purpose and audience, and it helps search engines find you.