Building A Foundation: Basic Search Optimization

Designing your site to be search engine friendly

There are two types of search engines: Crawler based engines and human powered directories. As of today, crawler search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN Search and AOL.
Examples of directories are Yahoo, LookSmart, Open Directory (dmoz.org), About.com, Business.com.

Crawler Based Engines

Locations and Frequency of Keywords

Title: Pages with the search terms appearing in the HTML title tag are often assumed to be more relevant than others to the topic.

Metatags: Use keywords and description metatags, but don't repeat too much; use variations.

Body Text: Search engines will also check to see if the search keywords appear near the top of a web page, such as in the headline or in the first few paragraphs of text. They assume that any page relevant to the topic will mention those words right from the beginning.

Search engines may also penalize pages or exclude them from the index, if they detect search engine "spamming." An example is when a word is repeated hundreds of times on a page, to increase the frequency and propel the page higher in the listings. Search engines watch for common spamming methods in a variety of ways, including following up on complaints from their users.

Off the page factors

Off the page factors are those that a webmasters cannot easily influence. Chief among these is link analysis. By analyzing how pages link to each other, a search engine can both determine what a page is about and whether that page is deemed to be "important" and thus deserving of a ranking boost. In addition, sophisticated techniques are used to screen out attempts by webmasters to build "artificial" links designed to boost their rankings.

Another off the page factor is clickthrough measurement. In short, this means that a search engine may watch what results someone selects for a particular search, then eventually drop high-ranking pages that aren't attracting clicks, while promoting lower-ranking pages that do pull in visitors. As with link analysis, systems are used to compensate for artificial links generated by eager webmasters.

Organic Listing Optimization for Search Engine

• Use descriptive title tags
• Use keyword meta tags
• Use description meta tags
• Make alt tags
• Write body text using keywords for your target market
• Headers
• Between "NOFRAMES" of framed sites
• Domain name and file names in URL
• Use geographic keywords for search localization optimization
• Use site validation: validator.w3.org
• Reveiw search engine suggestions for optimizing site. Example: Gooogle Webmaster tools
• Index your site. Check first to see if it is indexed. For example Google = site:yoursite.com in search field. No guarantees with free submissions.
  Submission example: Google Add URL
• Submit to human powered directories: Yahoo, LookSmart, Open Directory (dmoz.org), About.com, Business.com. Choose the right category
• Monitor results, see your traffic with hosting or use web traffic service.

Link Optimization for Search Engine

The more links to your site the better your ranking, as mentioned in the off the page factors. You can identify your competitors links by putting in the search field "link:yourcompetitorsurl.com" or linkpopularity.com.

Trade links, send link request emails, write articles and submit to e-zines, write press releases. Include link to your site in articles. In Source box include info on you, your business, your site.

Examples: Chicago Artists Resource, Art Quotes

Search Engine Obstacles

• Frames - pages embedded within pages (SE unable to index)
• Dynamic pages and special characters in URL (www.tinyurl.com)

• Splash pages and rich media (include paragraph on your splash page that pertains to your site content). Spiders don't read Flash pages. Embed small flash movies into your html pages, or create a link to your Flash element.
• Tables (text colors can off put SE)