Toolkit
Addition
Improving
Your Search Engine Rankings Simon
Wallis is Net Communications Director of X media UK.
Here are
his ideas on how to raise your rankings in Alta Vista and HotBot.
They seem pretty sensible to us.
"Approximately
70% of all net traffic comes via the engines. Of that 90% come via
the "Big Eight".
No skill
is more important to the success of your web site than understanding
how the engines work and being able to build your pages accordingly.
If you are on a low budget it is the only way.
Each engine
is very different. It may be necessary to build several versions
of your home page to ensure you optimize the code (markup). Or you
may want to keep your front page intact and the build a simple cover
or entry page.
The following
is however a generic template which will serve you well for most.
YOUR OPENING
EXERCISE
Why not print
off a copy of your code (markup). Maybe photocopy it. Take a highliter.
Black out everything which is of no use to the robot. All the html
for example. All the images and graphics. All the JavaScript and clever
stuff. In fact just about everything that isn't either META or some
sort of text, alt tag, text in a link etc.
Now make
like a robot. Read your page. Give it to a friend and ask what is
the page about?
Can he/she
tell? Who-based on that content alone would want to read it? How
are they going to find it? Now you are ready to start.
KEYWORDS
Meta files or
not, all pages should be build around certain keywords which are important
to your site and your visitors. I do not mean the 100 words you were
planning to bung in the meta keywords tag. I mean the dozen or so
words which are really at the heart of the subject you and your visitors
are interested in. Get a pad. Write down the words. Singly. Then in
pairs. Then in trebles.
Look at
the combinations as in:
British
Bookshops, Online Bookshops, British Bookstores, Online Bookstores
etc.
HOT TIP:
Where possible put in a singular and plural, ie British Banks /
Bank Account
NOW DO THE
PAGE
Now; without
spamming or doing anything unethical; you now need to put those key
words as often as possible where the robot can see them. (I repeat
not everything here is relevant to every engine)
TITLE TAG
Absolutely critical.
Put your key words in here. A must.
META TAGS
Meta Description:
This won't affect your ranking. It is the bit that appears when your
page is listed. Your chance for a power packed headline.
Meta Keywords:
I only use about 2 dozen. All my keywords plus their close relatives.
eg Books/Bookstores/Bookshops
A COMMENT
Can be very
useful for non meta engines. It encourages the engine to give you
a decent description. Several robots take it from here.
H1 TAG
A powerhouse
tactic. With the advent of the font tag it is not widely used. Robots
love them. Get your keywords in the H1 tag right up front.
H6 OPENING
PARAGRAPH
Use a 25 word
(no more or less) keyword packed opening paragraph. In English. With
grammar and punctuation. This is not your weekly grocery list. Do
not cheat. The robot will know. Use keywords once only. Plus relatives.
ALT TAGS
You see those
neat little tags which fly up while your graphic masterpiece is loading?
Put your keywords in there!
Do not put
"Picture of Jim"
Put "Jim
windsurfing, sailing, and waterskiing on vacation off Cape Canaveral,
Florida"
LINKS
Engines and
robots love them. Ask yourself how many times did you put in a search
and open a top ranking page to find it was full of links? This is
a very long subject on it's own.
HOT LINKS
TIP: Put the targeted search parameter as the link itself. Example.
A "top" web design agency. So called. Their links normally read
---
Clients,
Rates, Links, Portfolio, Team or something similar.
They should
read Web Design Rates, Internet Portfolio, Graphic Design and Brand
Imaging, and World Wide Web WWW Consultants and Specialists. See
the difference? Remember the poor robot can not read your graphic
links.
Think about
this: You do not need a link to the page you are on. That is obvious.
But find any excuse to put a keyword to the page you are on now
in your links which go to your next pages. You have got to be mentally
agile to do this! Look at the example very closely.
SUMMARY
That should
get you off to a flying start."
--John
Blower
|