Search Engines...They Get Smarter And Smarter


Introduction To Search Engines

There are two types of search engines; Robots and Search Directories. Some people call them Robots, Crawlers or Spiders but whatever you call them, you'd best learn as much as you can about them if you wish to get your website recognized as 99% of all people who go online use search engines.

Yahoo! is the major search directory and rather than use Robots to index web pages, it requires you to submit information yourself along with a nice chunk of change ($299.00) and then a 'real' person reviews your site for indexing.  Even after you've paid your money, there's no guarantee of a listing.

THE $64,000.00 QUESTION

What do we have to do to be recognized and indexed in the top 30 pages?  That's the $64,000.00 question!  The Robots base their relevancy algorithms on a combination of the text they see on a page or site, combined with external elements such as links and user behaviours/preferences.  One major problem is, they change their algorithms and combinations often so there is no secret formula that you can use time after time to place your page in the top 30.

THERE'S GOTTA BE A TRICK TO THIS SEARCH ENGINE STUFF.....

Some marketers think there are "tricks" that will improve the Robot's indexing but not only do they not work but these "tricks" could result in penalties or even get yourself banned.

Obviously, we want to stay away from "tricks" of any kind but we must make legitimate efforts in site design, HTML formatting and above all, content, content, content. I think I have the answer to the $64,000.00 question without having to pull any tricks and it's as simple as it gets....CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT.

 Fill your pages full of relevant information on your subject and the Robots will be happy, as well as your website visitor.  So, we have a dual task here and that's trying to make the robot happy and our visitor happy.

THOSE DARN META TAGS!....

Meta tags and Title tags are a couple of items that done properly will make the robot happy.  Meta tags are HTML tags that help describe your web page and give information to the search engines for ranking purposes.

They are listed within the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags and after your </TITLE> tag.  These tags are not viewable to your human guests but the little robots love them.  The <TITLE> tag should not contain more than 60 characters as the robot only recognizes 60 characters in this tag and the rest are cut off.  (Would make your title look a little funny if it were cut off in the middle.)

 Also, your title should contain some of your page keywords. The description meta tag should not be more than 150 characters and must contain your most important concept keywords or phrases.   Keyword meta tag should not contain more than 874 characters but hey, don't use all 874 just because you can, in fact, it's better to use only about 10 or 15 words.

Now, having said all this tech stuff, it must be noted that it's possible that you don't need all these tags anyway as not all search engines bother with them, some do, some don't but I feel that since there are still some using them, I'd rather be safe than sorry and it can't hurt to put them in.  In fact, just make any keyword search as a test and then check out the top 10 sites by right clicking the page and select "view source" and look for meta tags.  I'll bet if you do this enough, you'll find pages with no meta tags at all!  So there you go....

HOW ABOUT THOSE KEYWORDS....

They are important.  At the conception point of your web page, you have to brainstorm your site concept keywords.  This establishes your theme, the niche, the purpose of your web page and these keywords are important because each keyword will be the topic of one of your site's web pages.

 Each page in your site focuses on a topic, the topic will be one of the keywords in your master keyword list. Keywords are also important because this is how a searcher finds you.  Think about how you wish a searcher to find you.  Think about how they will find you, then incorporate these keywords and keyword phrases into your meta tag descriptions and meta tag keywords.

I suggest you get a more complete review of Meta tags and anything or everything to do with search engines, from Brad Callen, arguably the master of SE optimization. He has a fantastic e-course that will make you a pro in no time and you can have it free by just clicking here. CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT....I mentioned content earlier in the page but it is so important I want to elaborate. In the brick and mortar world the saying is, location, location, location.  If you have a good location your business has a chance to be successful.   In the Wide Web World, if you have great content, content, content,  you have a chance to be successful.

The content of your site is one of the most important factors for successful search engine marketing.  You must provide valuable information, with definitive references and specific terms and concepts that are relative to your website. Search engines usually read and index the first 500 words from each page they successfully crawl.  The text within that span of words is one factor that helps to determine your relevance for a particular search term.

I have only covered some of the basic search engine optimization tips here.  To do a complete coverage of this topic I would need a few hundred pages but, as I have mentioned before, search engine optimization is the property of Brad Callen. If you wish to get started immediately with a fantastic user friendly program just visit Seo Elite, you won't be sorry.