News

Improve Your Search Engine Rankings

Eighty-five percent of Web sites are discovered through
search engines like Google or Yahoo. That’s why it’s
important to make sure that your Web site shows up when
someone types in a keyword, like "small business
consultants," for example.

by Reid Goldsborough NFIB.com

To help make this happen,
employ these tips from Alan Webb, CEO of Abakus
Internet Marketing and search engine optimization (SEO)
expert:

How your site shows up on a search engine page depends
on some things you can’t easily control, such as how
many other sites link to yours, and on some things you
can control, like your site’s title and description.

Every Web page should have a title tag, which shows up
at the top of viewers’ browsers. You create a title tag
in the section of a Web page using a short piece of
HTML code, which directs how pages are seen by Web
browsers. The title tag is the piece of HTML code
search engines weigh the heaviest.

When creating a title tag, even experienced Web
designers often get it wrong by choosing the wrong
words. Don’t use a title tag such as "Welcome to
MyWebSite.com!" This will do nothing for your search
engine results.

Instead, use two or three keyword phrases, consisting
themselves of one to three words, separated by a
hyphen, that clearly spell out what your site is all
about. Choose those keyword phrases that Google
searchers will most likely type in. Use the same
keyword phrases in the text of the page itself, ideally
two or three times.

In choosing optimal keyword phrases, the pay site
Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com) or free site Overture
(http://inventory.overture.com) can help.

But don’t be guilty of "keyword flooding." Some Web
designers load their title tags with a dozen or more
keyword phrases. Search engines treat this as spam and
penalize a site for this in their rankings.

You should also use a meta description tag. It should
be placed after the title tag and looks like this:

META NAME="Description" CONTENT="The [specific]
industry’s hardest working company in providing
[specific] solutions to [specific] customers."

The meta description is what searchers will see after
the title in the list of Google results and other
search engines. If you don’t use a meta description
tag, searchers instead will see the text around the
first occurrences of the searched-for term, which may
not provide enough information for searchers to want to
click through to your site.

Particularly for business sites, sometimes it makes
sense to hire a professional to improve your search
engine rankings. Google factors in more than 100
different HTML, design, and off-page factors in ranking
sites. Testing different combinations is often needed.

One good place to look for professional help is the
Search Engine Optimization Consultants
(http://www.seoconsultants.com). Good sources of additional
information about search engine optimization are Spider
Food (http://www.spider-food.net), Search Engine Watch
(http://www.searchenginewatch.com), and SEO Chat
(http://www.seochat.com).

To read this and other related articles online, visit:
http://www.nfib.com/cgi-bin/NFIB.dll/jsp/toolsAndTips/toolsAndTipsDisplay.jsp?contentId=4045649

News Catrgory Sponspor:


Dorsey & Whitney - An International business law firm, applying a business perspective to clients' needs in Missoula, Montana and beyond.

Leave a Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.