Search Engine Knowledge from WebHostPad

Search Engine Knowledge
from WebHostPad.com

Overview:

Search engines can be the number one way for a website to receive traffic. A solid listing with Excite, Lycos, Yahoo or Google will bring more viewers to your site than any other marketing strategies.

That being said, getting your listing placed at the top of a search engine’s index, where it will be seen, is not easy. You need to have the knowledge of the search engines' distinguishing ways of registering sites. You need to know how to manipulate your site to make it show up when potential customers search the Web for targeted sites.

Maintaining top search engine listings as thousands of new websites arrive on the Internet every week is like pushing a car up a hill that keeps getting steeper and taller. To keep your website on top, we've pulled together our best information on search engine optimization.

Pit Falls to Avoid:
Launching a website that can’t be found in any major search engine is equivalent to starting a mail- order business and not publishing your phone number or address. On the Internet, the major search engines are the equivalent to worldwide yellow pages. It does not matter how well you design your new website if it’s incapable of being located in any of the major search engines.

Problem 1: Content on main page is in a graphic
Do not create copy on the main page as a graphic, use HTML text. The first page of a website should describe the product or service offered. Unfortunately, many website chose to use a graphical representation of this message. Search engines cannot read text contained in graphics. Search engines can only read HTML text. If the website does not include text on the home page, search engines have no content to index.

Problem 2: Frames are used
Frames are when a website is displayed in a split screen. Most sites use frames to keep navigation links, and contact information fixed on the left side of the screen. Search engines have problems with frames. First, only about half of the search engines can read split screens correctly to index the entire site's real content. Second, frames prevent people from setting a bookmark in their browser to a particular page within the site. Lastly, major search engines are often unable to link to internal pages.

Even though several search engines now claim to support framed pages, most engine-positioning professionals tend to agree that you should not use frames in your web design unless you absolutely have to.

Problem 3: Content is not consistent
Search engines are now starting to look at what your entire site is about. If a Web page is more relevant for a given keyword and it fits into an overall site theme, you will be ranked higher that a competitor that is not as targeted.

If you decide to sell cookies and produce a perfect Web page optimized for the keyword phrase "cookie" but the rest of your site is about cars, your cookie page will rank lower than other cookie pages that are in sites devoted to baking and foods.

When designing your site, tie everything together with a unifying theme. What is the strongest and broadest keyword that will describe your site? If your site is about cookies, then "baking" would be the site theme and "cookie," "bread," "pies" etc. could be keywords for individual pages. Optimize the home page for your site's keyword.

Sites sometimes attempt to be about everything under the sun. This will damage their chances of a solid ranking. If you are Amazon or another already established portal you don't have to be concerned. If you are an affiliate representing 100 different kinds of programs on one site, pick one or two and become specialized site.

Problem 4: Not Finding "404 Not Found" errors
Websites are changing constantly to keep on top. Pages are added and removed almost constantly to websites. However, if a page of site reaches a high ranking but is taken down at some later date, what happens to that ranking? It remains. Anyone who tries to visits that page from the search engine receives a "404 NOT FOUND" error. The search engine's automated software will revisit the page eventually to see if it still exists and when it sees it doesn't, it instantly drops the page listing from its index.

Problem 5: Poor keyword selections in the keyword meta tag and commas separating keywords in this tag.
Keyword meta tags need to be good descriptive words and phrases explaining the content and theme of the website. Between each of the keywords there needs to be a comma separating them.. The commas make search engines consider each word or phrase individually. If the commas are left out of the keyword meta tag, the search engine will consider several possible combinations of keywords that could place the website in incorrect listing resulting in unwanted traffic.

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