MAKING WEB PAGES WORK FOR YOU AND YOUR CLIENTS
PART VII - 12
KNOWN TIPS TO EFFECTIVE PAGES
Tip #1
HAVE TEXT ON YOUR HOMEPAGE
Search engines catalog text from various home pages. Lacking descriptive text on a page
leaves little chance of it appearing in the results of a search. Text needs not only be
graphic, but in HTML text also. Search engines catalog ALT text, text in comment, and meta
tags. A straight HTML description is recommended.
Tip #2
PICK MEANINGFUL KEYWORDS
Two or three keywords are crucial to your site, ensure those words are in your title and
mentioned early on in your web page. People already have those words present
on their pages but may not have them in their titles.
Tip #3
MORE KEYWORDS
Keep in mind the keywords you consider crucial are not exactly what users will enter. The
lack of success with search engines does not mean your site isn't being found. More words
are entered to find your site.
Example: Your web site is centered on "Orange County"
People go to a search engine
Enter words such as "Orange County California" or "Orange County Web."
The addition of just one word can make a site more relevant. It can be impossible to
anticipate what word will be used. The best bet is focusing on chosen keywords but also
have complete descriptions. The keywords should be in your text on your site and the Meta
tags. You can use the same keywords when submitting your site to search engines.
Tip #4
HAVE LINKS TO INSIDE PAGES
No links to the inside pages from the home page means search engines will not catalog your
site fully. The most descriptive, relevant pages are often the inside pages rather than
your home page. Try sending the search engines directly to the lower levels if they don't
ordinarily go there.
Tip #5
THE META TAG
How To Do it Link.
Meta tags help control a site's description in engines supporting them. This is NOT a
guarantee that the site will appear first. They are now used by all but one major search
engine. Adding meta tag description codes is not a magic bullet curing the site of dismal
rankings, you are simply limiting your ability to get a good listing.
What is a meta tag?
Meta Tax
Tutorial & Links
Meta tags give spider specific information, keywords or site summaries, about a site. Meta
tags in Web lingo are defined as "information about information."
Meta tags are part of HTML code. Staying behind the scenes -- end users never sees them.
Web authors may surround sentences or whole paragraphs with meta tags. Certain spiders
read the information that are tagged as a way to help index a site.
META tags should be placed in the head of HTML documents between the actual <HEAD>
tags and before the BODY tag. This is important with framed pages, some webmasters tend to
forget to include them on individual framed pages. If you use META tags only on the
frameset pages, you may be missing a number of potential visitors.
Using META description attributes let you add your own description to the pages:
Example of tags you could put in the header of an HTML document:
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Automotive Web USA is the Automotive
Industries Internet Publishing Service. Use AWUSA to find out who's who in the Automotive
Industry! See how easy and lucrative it is to advertise your auto products and services on
the Information Superhighway.">
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT= "autos, cars, for sale, services, web
hosting, webdesign, classifieds, dealerships, manufacturers.">
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="This page is about
friendship, love, sharing, and achieving balance in your life.">
Use 60 to 130 characters, make sure that several of your keywords are included in the
description.
Keywords are important since it is through them that users find your site.
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="life, friendship,
relationships, love, sharing, balance, happiness, harmony">
Use up to 800 characters and put the important keywords close to the top of your page.
Don't think of spiking the keywords by repeating the same word over and over. Most search
engine spiders have been refined to ignore such spam. Use each keyword only once including
both singular and plural forms.
Robots can be told which pages to index and which ones not to.
<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="all / none /
index / noindex / follow / nofollow">>
Defaults for the robot attribute are "all". This allows all the files to be
indexed. "None" tells the spider not to index files or follow the hyperlinks on
the page to other pages. "Index" means that this page may be indexed by the
spider, while "follow" means that the spider can follow the links from this page
to other pages. "Noindex" tells the spider not to index this page, but allow it
to follow the links and index those pages. "Nofollow" allows the page itself to
be indexed, but the links not be followed. Robot attributes can be useful, as you can see.
You can specify the distribution of pages for indexing. Indexing can be global, or can be
restricted to certain countries.
<META NAME="distribution" CONTENT="Global">
Help the robot classify your site by assigning a rating for your pages which is a
possibility:
<META NAME="rating" CONTENT="General">
Making revisions to your site or updating frequently ask the robot to revisit your site
after a certain time. Use a time frame between 3 weeks to 6 months, which is recommended.
<META NAME="revisit after" CONTENT="30days">
How to do it:
Tip #6
SUBMIT TO THE "BIG 5"
After all the right things are done with the text, keywords, Meta tags, etc. submit
yourself to search engines. 95% of all links come from locations such as these:
•Yahoo •Excite •Lycos •AltaVista •Infoseek
Or join the All Net 2000 family and be submitted to the "Big 5" and the
"Top 500" also.
Tip #7
SWAP LINKS
Swap links with other sites! Place a number of related links on your site. Then contact
sites asking for reciprocal links. It’s surprising how many people are doing this.
Ask if you can include a graphic or banner with the link, if they're really cooperative!
Have a page on the site for this purpose only, call it something like "Hot
Links".
Tip #8
THE LINK EXCHANGE
If you're adventurous enough join the "Link Exchange". Free banner exchanging
program with link sites all over the world. Some quirky rules apply, and it takes a lot of
energy, but the results are worth it!
Simply visit www.linkexchange.com .
Tip #9
BE PERSISTENT
Once in an engine check your site once a week at least. Things happen and pages can
disappear from catalogs. Links go screwy so watch for trouble, and resubmit when you spot
it.
Or join the All Net 2000 family and receive free reports telling where you are
located in the search engines.
Tip #10
RE-SUBMIT REGULARLY
Engines are visiting sites on a schedule developed from site changes. The engines are
growing smart and realize some sites change content only once or twice a year, so they are
not visited regularly. Resubmitting every month will ensure your site's content is
current. Join the All Net 2000 family and be re-submitted every 60 days.
Tip #11
HAVE PATIENCE
Search engines can take weeks or months before their catalogs are updated. They may
"crawl" every night, but new findings aren't public until the catalogs are
updated.
Example: Mid-April 1996, WebCrawler's catalog listed finds through Feb. 1996 only. Alta
Vista seemed to be the same way. The catalog for Excite reflected changes soon after they
were made, indicating the catalog was constantly updated. Recent reports reflect that they
are slowing down due to massive volumes of submissions.
Tip #12
DON'T SPAM OR TRY TO "BEAT" THE SYSTEM THROUGH
ABUSE.
Spamming doesn't work with every search engine. The content of most web pages should be
enough for search engines to determine relevancy without webmasters resorting to repeating
keywords to try and "beat" other web pages. The stakes
keep rising, and users are beginning to hate sites that take to these measures.
Efforts should be spent on networking, exchanging links and alternative forms of
publicity.