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Webmasters should always make Search Engine Optimization a high priority when creating a website. The dilemma that one faces is having a broad-based strategy considering that there is no clear standard adopted by the various public and private search engines and directories. I believe it to be absolutely critical for a webmaster to create simple guidelines for oneself in order to have a basis to evaluate techniques. Here, I will present the guides that I feel will make you the most successful.
Search engines versus directories
Search Engines use an automated process to discover new web pages. The program that handles this search, sometimes called a robot or spider, crawls around the web following hyperlinks and indexing the content that it finds. This means that eventually a search engine will find your page, assuming that a link to your site exists somewhere on the web. However, it is impossible to determine how long it will take. For this reason, it is important to submit your site to search engines. Submitting your site speeds the process and increases your chance for higher placement in search results, thus giving the website designer some control over placement.
A directory differs from a search engine in that it will only find sites based on manual submissions. Thus, if you do not manually submit your site to the directory, the directory will never know of or index your site, therefore never listing your site in search results. Directories such as Yahoo and Magellan send personnel to visit the site to determine the content and its relevance to the submitted topic. After the review, the website designer may receive an e-mail message asking for additional information so a site description can be created before the site is placed in the directory. The advantage to this type of directory is that search results are more likely to contain quality content matches to any given query. However, increasing the chances for a higher placement in search results is usually not within the control of the website designer.
Search results are ranked according to relevance to the given search criteria. A few common characteristics exist:
(1) Title : A search engine will first scan the HTML title tag to look for words that match the query.
(2) Beginning content : A search engine will then look for the query word(s) near the top of the document, assuming that relevant content is mentioned immediately. Creating a logical descriptive summary paragraph using as many keywords as possible and placing it in the first section of the body of the document, within the first 200 characters can help greatly. Remember that users will read it, so it must make sense. Also include the keywords in other areas of the document, including the last sentence, if possible.
(3) Frequency : A search engine will look for frequency of the query word(s), assuming that the more times a word appears, the likely the document is a good match to the search query. Due to the spammers, it is now recommended not to exceed a frequency of a word more than 5 times in a 1000 words. This will give you a keyword density of less than 5%.
Title element
Let’s start with the title element, one of the most important HTML elements, but it's often overlooked. Search Engines will use the title element to determine relevance. Its main function is to describe the content of a web page. Even if the title is not a visible part of your web page, it is important to the quality of your web site because it will be visible in search engine lists, the windows title bar, and users bookmarks. When users search the internet for web sites, most search engines will display the title of your web site in the search result. Make sure the title match the content the user is looking for. Then it is more likely one will click on the link to visit your web site. When the user is visiting your website, the title will be visible in the windows title bar. Make sure the title describes your site even when the window is minimized. After the user has visited your website, the title of your web pages will be stored in his history folder (or even in his favorites folder). Make sure the title clearly describes your pages for a future visit. The title should be greater than 15 characters and less than 80 characters; many agree the 60-80 character range is best, the W3C recommends 72 characters. Be sure to include spaces in your character count. Many of the 2 and 3 letter words will be disregarded by search engines but still are part of your character count. As a webmaster, you should prepare shorter versions of your title element for usage when submitting your website manually to directories. Many directories require shorter title elements, so being prepared for this will make life easier. Many search engines use the title as the site description, so make it appealing. You should not use all uppercase letters. In general, one should include a brief 7-12 word description of your site within the title element, using as many as 3-5 of your keywords. Some experts say one should avoid using your company name (unless it is highly recognizable) because this wastes space that could be used for keywords. There are other experts that recommend local regional targeting within the title element to focus on targeting cities, counties, or states. Titles should be unique for each page, no duplication; and should also be developed in a way that targets your primary keyword phrase for that page and possibly a secondary keyword phrase.
Meta keywords
Meta tags have never been a guaranteed way to gain a top ranking on crawler-based search engines. Today, the most valuable feature they offer the web site owner is the ability to control to some degree how their web pages are described by some search engines. The minimum keywords length should not be less than 150 characters and the maximum keywords length should not exceed 1055 characters. One should not engage in what they call keyword stuffing (a form of spam) to trick search engines into giving a page a false high relevance ranking. By repeating a keyword more than 5 times, one risks a search engine considering the page to be spam and not being indexed. Another method that spammers used to trick search engines was to use the meta http-equiv="keywords" tag, the use of this tag is now discouraged. One should note that the use of the meta name="keywords" will be ignored by most search engines these days. These same search engines tend to value of more importance the text content of a page. Be sure to keep this in mind if there are keywords and key phrases being targeted. Many directories still consider the keywords so be prepared when submitting a website to a directory. The limitations for these directories will vary, so, be prepared to provide smaller lists of keywords when requested.
Meta description
The Meta Description Tag is a part of HTML code that allows you to give a short and concise summary of your web page content. The words placed in this Meta Tag, are often used in the search engines result pages (SERP), just below the Title Tag as a brief description of your page. In the Search Engine Results Pages, after reading the Title, a user usually studies the description of the page and decides whether she wants to visit your site or not. Your description meta tag should not be less than 55 characters and should not exceed 255 characters. Do not use the meta http-equiv="description" tag for the same reasons as in the previous paragraph. Some Search Engines prefer to ignore your Meta Description Tag and build the description summary on the basis of the search term for the SERP on the fly. They usually pick up parts of the text on your page wherever the search terms appear. The only exceptions are the Flash, Frame or All Image sites that have no content, and some high importance websites, where the search term is not found in the text. In such a case, search engines will pick up your entire Meta Description Tag and display it.
Posted by BrianMcGinnis, October 24, 2004 10:56 PM