our creative process : web insight
search engine optimization
No two search engines are exactly alike. Regardless, we need to follow the same set of guidelines so your site ranks the highest it can in search engine results. To learn more about search engines, visit Search Engine Watch.
According to Rachel McAlpine, author of Web Word Wizardry:
"There are two powerful moves you can make to get high search engine ranking:
| 1 | Create a fast-loading, strongly focused web site, with perfect navigation, high credibility, and high-quality content.
| 2 | Get listed by a major directory such as Google and Yahoo, which the big search engines refer to. Success with these search engines depends on the content and quality of your web site, on how you fill out their forms, and luck.
As a rule, search engines use four main criteria to evaluate how closely your page matches somebody’s query.
| 1 | Relevance (they consider the relevance of a page to the query words).
| 2 | Prominence (certain positions on a web page, such as title, meta description, and body text, are considered prominent. They are power spots for the placement of keywords. If the query word occurs at the beginning of one of those prominent places, that page gets a higher ranking).
| 3 | Link popularity (search engines take into account any hyperlinks FROM other web sites).
| 4 | Signs of life (search engines date your pages when they index them first, and they note subsequent changes. They favor sites where content changes and new content is added.)
Everything starts with keywords. Search engines tend to rank web pages according to the keywords they find in:
1 the title
2 headings
3 body text
4 meta keyword tag
5 meta description tag
6 hyperlinks on the page
When choosing keywords, treat every page as a separate project. There are distinct benefits from a unique keyword list for every page as each page becomes an entry to the web site.
Steps to determining keywords
- Brainstorm all possible keywords ('what is this page about?' 'what does this page do?'– do this over and over until you have at least twenty words or phrases)
- Enter the mind of the person searching (list all query words you think your audience will use)
- Consult other people (ask a couple of outsiders how they would search for a particular web page)
- Research your competitor’s keywords
- Research the keywords being used by searchers
- Combine words into phrases
- Prioritize your list of keywords
Meta tags
Keyword Meta Tag: You can safely list up to 25 key phrases or keywords. Vary the number of keywords you
use for different pages. One page, try using just three or four keywords. Some search engines give higher relevancy to keywords in a short list.
Include alternative spellings.
Title tag: Each page should have it's own unique title. This tag is:
- tremendously influential in deciding how the page is ranked by most search engines,
- is the first thing shown in search results, and
- is displayed in Bookmarks and Favorites.
Tips for Title Tags
- give every page its own unique title (60 to 80 characters in length)
- put your lead keyword first
- write your title like a newspaper headline or summary or description of the page
- vary the length of titles from page to page
- if your title is more than four or five words, remember that the last words won’t appear in bookmarks or browser bars
Description Meta tags:
| 1 | Write a description that can be safely truncated : a description of about 10 words followed by another 10 to 15 words of optional information.
| 2 | Your aim is to control the description that appears in search results. To make this amazing even happen, you must put a clever summary or description of the page in the meta description tag and first paragraph in the body copy.
| 3 | Put your lead keyword phrase at the beginning of the description. Make your description keyword-rich.
When it comes to search engine submission, we leave that up to you. It's not that hard, just takes a little of your time and minimal amounts of effort. To learn more about submissions, visit Search Engine Watch.