Quick tips on what TO do and NOT to do
by Ryan Adams, Webmaster
ClickQuick (www.clickquick.com)
Below you will find several additional suggestions on what to do when
optimizing your pages for search engine ranking success.
- When creating titles and meta descriptions, use your keywords
within natural descriptions that will signal the viewer that they have
found what they have been looking for. Don’t sacrifice a compelling
and readable title or meta description simply to load it with
keywords. It is not enough to just be ranked first; your page title
and description must also convince the viewer to click to visit your site.
- When creating a list of meta keywords, be sure to include the most
important and relevant words at the top of the list. Many search
engines will only index the first 100-200 characters (not keywords)
of the meta keyword list.
- After you have made important changes to a web page’s content, or
have changed titles or keywords to try to boost relevancy rankings,
resubmit your site to the search engines. Although the spiders will
eventually revisit your site, you can speed things up by
resubmitting. Infoseek is the best search engine to test page
changes, as their database is generally updated within a matter of
hours. However, a particular URL can only be submitted once every
24-hours on Infoseek, so don’t submit changes you can’t live with
for at least one day.
- Add titles, headings, and meta tags to pages other than the your
home pages. Specific content pages or any other pages which you
would like web users to find, can all be submitted. Also, although
many search engines ask that you only submit the root domain (i.e.
http://www.yourdomain.com), since their spider will find the rest,
be sure to submit all pages you would like indexed, up to a stated
maximum per day, if there is one. Submitting pages manually will
insure the quickest indexing.
- Keep image alt tags short, to minimize distorting the image frame
while loading, to keep them professional in appearance when a
visitor does a mouse-over, and to make navigation easy for visitors
who have turned off image loading.
- Be sure to take the time to submit to Yahoo! Although it is more
difficult and time-consuming to submit, Yahoo! is the Internet’s
most widely visited web site, and the most frequently used search tool.
-
It is imperative that you monitor your site's rankings, and those of
your competitors. It will most likely be necessary to go back and
make some changes to your pages, especially in the title and meta
tags, before you reach the rank you want. A great time saver for
this is WebPosition. WebPosition will allow you to find your ranking
for sets of keywords you define in all of the major search engines, all
with the click of a button. No more need to visit each search engine
manually and scroll through the results looking for your site.
Quick tips on what NOT to do
- Do not ‘spam’ when creating meta keywords. Many of the search engines now have the ability to determine
whether or not sites have spammed their meta keyword lists. Do not repeat a keyword more
than three times, and don’t list identical keywords consecutively.
- Do not load pages with keywords by using text of the same color as
the background. This is also considered spamming, and is
detectable by all search engines. Previously, many web site
designers listed keywords dozens or hundreds of times using white
text on a white background (or other color combinations). Although
not visible to viewers, search engines still indexed these words, and
increased the pages search rankings. All search engines have
upgraded to defeat this form of spamming, and in most cases
offending pages, or even ENTIRE domains, have been removed from their database.
- Do not create meta descriptions longer than 150 characters. 150
characters, including spaces, is the maximum that many search
engines can display underneath the page title in the set of search
results. Keep the meta description under 150 characters to insure it
is not cut off and is understandable for the viewer.
- Do not use frames if possible. Most search engines have difficulty
indexing the contents of pages which use frames, generally
resulting in very low rankings. Remember, search engines do not
see web pages in the same manner as a web visitor.
(Posted 11/1999)
ClickQuick.com provides in-depth, unbiased reviews of affiliate and pay-per-click programs. More than just a simple directory,
program reviews include insights and feedback from hundreds of web sites, and are rated based on their real-world performance.
ClickQuick's long-running email newsletter has contributed over 30 articles and tutorials to the affiliate program industry, with topics
ranging from strategies for improving sell-through rates to debunking common affiliate program myths.
E-mail: ryan@clickquick.com
Author's URL: http://www.clickquick.com
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