Web Concepts

Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category

The "Header Tag" is situated at the top of the source code in a webpage. The header tag is usually made up of three components the "Title tag", the "Description tag" and the "Meta tag(s)".

Modern browsers are very tolerant of your internal page layout, so if you miss out tags like , and , along with their associated cloding tags, you're unlikely to see a problem with the layout of your page.

So why bother putting them the header tags in? Different spiders read different parts of the Header tags, currently we know that Google give a high priority to the "Title" and "Description" tags. Whilst Yahoo also gives additionsl consideration to the "Meta" tags.

The first item in the toolbox is a Search Term Suggestion Tool. It helps you to choose search phrases that are actually being used. One of your favourites for non-specialists is Overture, a great free tool that deserves the exposure we're giving it here. So the URL where you can find specific keywords is:

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Once you have the keyword or phrase you want, go to Google, Yahoo or MSN and search for the term. Somewhere on the page usually at the top there will be a piece of text that says "results out of...". This does not signify how many companies are competing with you, what it does signify is how many pages the search engine understands to have some relevancy to the search term. As a general rule the higher the number the more difficult top placing will be.

Having familiarised yourself with the two tools above, it's critical that you now use them to identify the keywords that are going to generate the best traffic, not necessary the most traffic.

Using a spread sheet program like Excel, tabulate your findings number of searches against the number of competitive pages. This should be enough information for you to be able to make a decision on which keywords are likely to be successful, along with the chances of gaining a good position compared with the competition.

There will be search terms that have a reasonable number of searches each month but some will have a much lower competition, making them a far easier option for early success in search engine positioning.

Judgin your keywords correctly is a major hurdle. Time spent getting them right will do more for your ultimate success than just about any other element of the optimisation process.

Without the right keywords, nothing else matters. The trick with keyword selection is not what most people think, which is to use the most popular words in your category. Instead you want your keywords and keyword phrases to be focused on the exact words your prospective customers are most likely to use.

Here's an example to illustrate the point:

Words like cars and vehicles are just popular to pursue. Typing these into a search at Lycos produses results something like this: a search for cars gave me more than 6 million pages...and for vehicles more than 5 millions. It would be difficult to get to the top using these keywords, although given time, not impossible.

But it's better to be smart than ambitious. You're much better off going after a less popular, more specific keyword phrase such as "used car price". This would attract people looking for a specific keyword, which is more closely related to your actual product or service. So when someone finds you with one of these highly specific keywords, they're much more likely to buy form you.

Choosing the wrong keyword - say "car buying advice", whilst catching the small number that do use it as a search keyword, would reduce the number of potential hits dramatically. In this case "car buying guide" and "car loan" have every little competition but quite a lot of searches.

Another point to be aware of can be demonstrated by looking at a recent example. A client sold Siemens Domestic Appliances, in his innocence they were insisting of being optimised for "Siemens". Whilst the word "Siemens" is a vary popular word, the fact that most "Siemens" searches are mobile phone related only goes to confirm the need to research properly. If indeed the site had been optimised for the word "Siemens" not only would have the project have been significantly more expensive, but it would not have fulfilled the user experience resulting in the next click being on the back button.

At this point you will no doubt have an idea as what keywords are appropriate to your site. But before you adopt these keywords it would be preferable to ensure the words are actually used in searches, and then assess how achievable they are.

There are broadly two types of search engine/directory services on the WEB. The term "search engine" is often used to describe both types. But crawler-based search engines and human-powered directories gather their listings in significantly different ways.

Crawler-based search engines such as HotBot.com, Google.com MSN and nowadays Yahoo, crawl the web by means of a "web spider". The spider is a powerful computer program that access thousands of Web pages and records what it finds. It possesses a level of intelligence, allowing it to make fairly sophisticated judgments on relevancy and store the information in its database. When you search one of these systems, you're actually searching the records in the spider's database.

The spiders operate an a sort of milk round. Once your site is on a spider's list it will recieve periodic re-cisits, and so changes to your site get recorded on the search engine. Page titles, body copy and other elements all play a role in how the page is given relevancy.

Crawler-based search engines have three major elements. We've already mentioned the spider. it visits a web page, reads it, and then follows links to other pages within the site. It then returns to the site on a regular basis to identify site changes.

The information the spider finds goes into the index. The Index is a huge electronic list containing a copy of every web page that the spider finds. the time between being spidered and indexed can be several months. until a site is indexed it's not available to searchers; this is why you can submit a site to a search engine and see no apparent results for an extended period.

The third part of a search engine is the search program, it sifts through the millions of pages in the index to identify relevant matches to a search. There are three main crawler based engines Google, MSN and YAHOO between them having approximately 80-90%.

A human-powered directory, such DMOZ and YAhoo directory, depends on human editors for its listing. During submission you submit a short description to the directory for youe entire site, the editors may take this description or write one for the sites under review. A search looks for matches only in the descriptions submitted.

Changing your web pages has no effect on your listing. Things that are useful for improving a listing with a crawler-based search engine have no impact on improving a listing in a directory. However a good site, with good content, is more likely to get reviewed for three that a poor site.

Times have changed, it used to be that a search engine either presented crawler-based results or human-powered listings. It is now extremely common for both types of results to be used for Website listing. A hybrid search engine will usually favour one type of listing over the other. For example, Yahoo is a human-powered search engine, however it also presents crawler-based results provided by its own engine spider.