If a person wants to optimize their website they must understand what the search engines look for. You wouldn’t want to hide colored potatoes for an Easter egg hunt because the kids are looking for eggs and not potatoes. Search engines work the same way. There are a certain set of components that all of the search engines look for: keywords, HTML tags, and links to your site.
Keywords – Search engines do not read sentences and paragraphs they can only pick out certain words that they see as keywords to index the site. Having the right keywords placed on your page can ensure that the site will be indexed correctly. Likewise if you have the wrong keywords on your site it can index your site the wrong way. (Miller)
HTML Tags – Search engines will search through the metadata data in the code of the site for the title of your site and keywords as well. Making sure that you have the right keywords in your Meta tags will help the search engine figure out what content to associate with your site. The TITLE tag is also very important because not only do you want to provide the title of the website but you also want to add a few important keywords. This will help the search engine index the site correctly and find it more quickly. (Miller)
Links to your site – Links for your website are very important to search engines. If your site has a lot of links to it from other websites then this tells the search engine that it is important. The more external sites that link to your site have the more important that the search engine thinks your site is. Of course you want your links to be on sites with similar content as yours and that will help increase indexing more than random websites. (Miller)
These are not the only things that the search engines look for but they are the most important ones and a good place to start optimizing your site.
Ten Factors to Improve search Results
1) Know your customer. This may seem obvious but it is something that is often overlooked. Provide value for the people visiting your site and find out what they are searching and how they are getting to your site. (Miller) What you might think that visitors are searching for keywords A and B, but really visitors are searching for keywords C and D. Know who is coming to your site and appeal to what they want.
2) Improve Content. Once you figure out what your customers are looking for you can change the content on your site to appeal to them. By doing this it will create better indexing for the search engine. Creating new content is a good idea as well because it will provide more for the spiders to find. Then if you create more content about one particular subject the spiders might index you very high for that subject (the more content you have on a particular subject indicates that you know a lot about that subject, to the search engines at least) (Miller).
3) Create Clear Organization – Organizing the HTML for your site can create a much better search as well. The most important information in your HTML should be put first (Miller). You want the spiders to find the best information first so your site gets indexed correctly. Since HTML is text, it is one of the most important places to have the right content. Use headings and subheadings to organize the code this will tell the spiders that it is important and that it should be indexed. Shorten the URL’s in the code (Miller). You don’t want the spiders wasting time searching through a large URL; you want the spiders finding the relevant content.
4) Fine Tune Keywords – Finding out what keywords people are using to find your site is crucial (Miller). Just because you think that a keyword is relevant doesn’t mean that your visitors think so. Set up some analytics and track how people are getting to your site. Find out the major keywords people are using to find your site.
5) Most Important Comes First – Take the fine tuned keywords and put them first on your site. Provide the most important and relevant information at the beginning so the spiders can find the most important information first (Miller).
6) Update META Tags – Since META tags are in the code they are not seen when the visitor comes to the site. That said, tag as many good keywords that you can in your META tags (Miller). By tagging your META tags thoroughly it will make it much easier for the spiders to find your site.
7) Request Inbound Links – Search engines think that your site is really important if many other sites are linking to yours (Miller). It creates more avenues for the spiders to find your site and also for visitors too.
8) Submit your Site – Submitting your site to the search engines will provide faster indexing. By submitting your site you are making sure that they index your whole site. Waiting for the search engines to index your site on their own does not ensure that every webpage gets indexed (Miller).
9) Create a Site Map – Submitting a site map to the search engines is a great way for search engines to find all of your sites URL’s (Miller). It is a map of all the links and web pages that are organized on your site (in hierarchical order). It lets the search engines know exactly what is on your site and where it can be found. If you make changes to your site make sure you change it in your sitemap and resubmit it to the search engines.
Site Map Below
10) Use Text Over Images – If there is any media (pictures, video, ect) on your site the spiders will not find anything in them (Miller). Making sure that your media is tagged correctly with text will ensure that it will not go unnoticed (to the spiders at least).
No Text Picture Text Tagged Picture
Make sure that whoever is making these changes to the site is a qualified individual. This could be some technical staff in your company, the maker of the website, design staff, marketing staff or ideally all of the above (Miller). By using all of these departments while optimizing your site will make sure that:
A. your site runs well technically
B. the design of the site stays consistent
C. the proper keywords, location data, and content will be relevant to current marketing.
By having everyone work together on the site update will make certain that every department will be satisfied with the update.
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