Search Engine Optimization - Part 2
Article ID: KB101553
As we discussed in last month’s newsletter: Search engines are
your customer's first choice for finding web sites. Search listings
overwhelmingly outperformed banner ads and tiles on all measures,
including: Aided and unaided awareness, Likelihood to click-on and
Overall opinion.
The First Step - Titles & Keywords:
The first rule to remember is: The <TITLE> tag content is the
most important element of web page design related to scoring well on
most search engines. Most importantly, the first thing most
Search Engines look for are the keywords that are contained in the
Title tags of your web page. Secondarily, you should not lose sight
of the fact that you are attempting to provide accurate information
about your product or service to your client or customer.
Step 1: Construct a list of all of the keywords and
keyphrases that your customer is most likely to use when searching
for your site. Start with a common sense list relating to your
product or service; then run searches on these keywords. Make a list
of the sites that come up in the top ten positions – this is your
competition.
Step2: Visit the sites that your competitors have built
that have achieved top ten Search Engine ranking and view the source
code in your browser (Click on View and then scroll down to Source
and click on it). Look at the keywords and keyphrases that they are
using effectively and add them to your list.
Step 3: With your list in hand visit
www.jimtools.com,
go to the keywords page and use the tools in the keyword tool kit to
refine your list. This critical step can be challenging. However,
the work you put into the job at this point – narrowing and focusing
your keywords - will be very productive in the end.
Step 4: Sort your words and phrases in order of relevancy.
I use the GoTo Keyword Wizard at Jimtools to find out how many
searches were run on a particular word or phrase in the last month.
Jimtools has some truly great products and services that will help
you to refine your keywords and as you will see throughout this
series we will be referring you to this site on numerous points.
Step 5: Place your keywords in order of relevancy in the
title of your page:
<title>most important keyword, second most important, third most
important </title>
Things not to do: Do not repeat your keywords – you may
see people doing this but most search engines will penalize you for
"keyword stuffing." Keep your list under 30 keywords-phrases and
highly prioritized. Do not use keywords that will not frequently
appear in the "body" of your page(s). If you use non relevant
keywords – words that do not appear in your page at all – you will
be penalized. This issue of keyword placement and density will be
the topic for our next article.
Next: Keywords
Contributors
Greg Snow:
Greg is the CEO of Advantrics LLC, which is the parent company
for PixelMill and
Vivid Office. Greg has an
incredible background in FrontPage Development and Research, and
keeps up to date with the latest Search Engine News. He is the
author of the Search Engine article series from the PixelMill
newsletter.
Greg Snow, PixelMill Newsletter, Volume 2 - Issue 1 : 01/01/2002
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