Important For SEO

Too Much of a Good Keyword

What keywords should you use?
Think about what your prospective customers type in when they are looking for you. “Try to think from a user’s perspective,”

When you have a good set of keywords, put them into the URLs, page titles, and content of your Web pages. “There are lots of little tricks to this,”

“For example, the most effective page titles are about 75 characters long and include the most important keywords at the beginning. On each page, keywords and phrases should represent 2% to 3% of the total content.” Don’t overdo the use of key search terms, however. “If a search engine’s algorithms interpret your site as a keyword hog, it will pass it by,

Web Promotion

Next, you’ll want to link your site to other sites, which will both increase traffic overall to your site and boost your search engine rankings, since the search engines pick up on the number of times people link to and from your site and rank you higher accordingly. So do things like listing your site with online business directories, even if you think no one will find you through them. “Those links may not produce any direct leads, but they could bump you up in the search engine rankings, especially if they are popular or highly visited sources,

SEO

You should also formally submit your site to the major search engines, which allows them to index it. Include at least Yahoo (YHOO), Google, and MSN (MSFT), but don’t necessarily limit it to those three. People searching the Internet don’t all use the same search engines. “Research shows that older audiences still like AOL (TWX) and professional audiences tend to like MSN and Google, while younger audiences often like Yahoo. Only about one-third of users use one search engine consistently,”

Knowing your audience will help you decide which search engines to optimize for. Go to their home pages and search “how do I submit my site?” to get easy instructions.

Flash Won’t Help Rankings

Use plenty of text on your site, even in your drop-down menus, your headers, and your footers on each page. Text is what the search engine crawlers are looking for. Text within Flash-based components won’t help, however. “This text is not accessible to the search engine site crawlers, and will not get picked up. Flash looks great, but it won’t help boost your search rankings,”

Search engine optimization is technical and can be time-consuming, since the major search engines are constantly changing their methodology to stay ahead of competitors. That means you have to keep jockeying for position so your site gets noticed.

Virtual Tour Guides

If you engage an SEO firm, consider the cost and the return on investment, remembering that moving up in the search rankings is a gradual process that may take several months. Chances are, if your corporate competitors control the top 10 search engine results spots, it will be costly and perhaps even impossible to dethrone them.

The good news is that search engine rankings are free, and online searching is the third-most-frequent activity for people who are online: Only checking e-mail and Web surfing rank higher, McPherson says. “Search engines not only help users find you, they play virtual tour guide by taking users directly to the page with the information they’re seeking.”