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I've written this tutorial
for improving search engine placement and position ratings to
help you promote your web site and increase traffic and visibility
to your web site.
All the information contained in this article was obtained
from the list of resources on the Search Engine Placement index.
I also keep a running file in my mail folder for search engine placement
information and some of the tips were gleaned from here via the
newsgroups and lists that I subscribe to. The best of which is the
newsletter published by Danny Sullivan the author of The Webmasters
Guide to Search Engines. This article is meant as an overview of
all these articles and newsletters. This e-zine will also start
to maintain a search engine site which will be updated as I find
new information or you share some with me and the readers.
How Your Url and Content Can Improve Search Engine Positions
Having a domain of your own can be used to raise search engine
positions if you index your site to your advantage. You're thinking
how right? I will use this site as an example. For navigation and
layout purposes I have split this site up into several smaller sites.
These are broken down into even smaller sites with specific audiences
in mind. The html index which is a reference for HTML code and document
layout, the tutorial index which is generally lessons on how to
implement the reference materials in the HTML index, the site developers
index which is an index for references and resources of interest
to site developers and marketers. The site developers area is indexed
into three areas. Two are the new promotion and search engine indexes
and the third is the original index.
This helps in two ways, first of all, on the search engines
that index sites and not pages I get six listings instead of one.
As I understand the way these critters think, if it sees an index.html
file it thinks it's a different site. The second benefit is it enables
me to use, more effectively, the keywords in my meta tags, title
and document structure. The only real difference it makes to me
is in the directory at the ISP, I have six instead of one. Remember
to link to all the sub-pages that are part of the site so the robot
can index those as well. You may want to try to list these yourself
because the bot can sometimes take quite a while to get around to
it and there are no penalties for this so why not just disregard
the information on the site and try and do it yourself. If you use
the same keywords in several related documents you could get a long
list of your documents placed at the top of the list. If you use
Alta Vista you may have noticed this already.
The content of the page will help in better placement on
some of the engines because they track the keyword usage in the
content but of those that do some use % in which case ounce equals
best or 100%. As an author I don't like to continually use the same
words over and over however, if you look at it from this perspective
it is very advantageous. WebCrawler and Lycos use keywords contained
in the body to give a higher ranking so if placement in these two
is important sprinkle keywords throughout the page.
This brings to mind some of the "spamming" techniques
mentioned briefly in the first months issue. "Spamming"
is now useless because as quick as webmasters learn a new trick
it is penalized by the search engines shortly after it is used widely.
Everyone knows the old same color font as background trick, and
so they started hiding them in comments
now both are being penalized at all search engines but Open Text
which is currently down and not accepting URLs. They say they are
making some adjustments, be sure this is one of them! A rule of
thumb should be if you can't see it on the page and it isn't part
of the , , or in the image tag "alt"
attribute forget it! It will only penalize your rating, or in some
cases, at some of the engines it results in an outright ban for
the domain name for up to six months. All I have to say about this
is HOORAY for the engines, "spamming" is a researchers
nightmare! <BR>
<BR>
<B>How Document Structure and Page Layout Affect Search Engine Placement</B><BR>
Document structure and the style of page layout (frames, tables
etc.) do affect your listing. In some cases ie: frames, it will
limit the robots' ability to even index your site! If your using
frames you should have the robot index the no frames version as
some can't index frames or will just index the frameset which isn't
much to index and will result in a low ranking. The use of tables
to layout a document can and will in some cases change your placement
because when you have a table for say a left border margin you force
the meat of the document where most of your keywords will be found
further down in the document lowering your ranking. Keep in mind
that some engines bots only index part of your site ranging from
10-50%. A rule of thumb could be to put keywords in the left margin
or in the top table of your document. <BR>
For document structure the easiest way to explain it is to give
you a proper structure for an HTML document, so here it is:</p>
<p><font color="#CC9900"><!--doc type--> important for validation
<br>
<html> this is an html document<br>
<head> this is the start of the head element<br>
<title>Place as many keywords as possible here, be sure they
are the most relevant and most important title of
document
meta tag for keywords
meta tag for description
this is the end of the head element
this is the start of the contents of the document or
in simple terms everything before this is not in the "viewing"
area of the browser.
This
is header
These are used like a title in the viewing area. These are used
by some search engines to arrive
at ratings as
are
and,
and
and
which are a sort of sub title, using them for emphasis or font size
is actually bad HTML!
this is the end of the body
element
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