Search Engine Optimization

Not sure where to put this, so mods, feel free to move if necessary.

I have been creating web sites without much regard to meta descritptions and keywords. I finally got around to adding the descriptions and keywords in the headings, but still find that search engines only seem to see the title info.

For instance, if I type any of my keywords into a search engine, the page won't be listed. If I type the title into a search engine, it is listed.

Altavista and Yahoo list if searched by title info, but Google doesn't even find my title info.

Is there something else I need to do? Do I need to somehow register with search engines? I have experience with building websites, but am new to search engine optimization.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks,

Steve

 

I've only ever done the free adding to sites, but there are some utilities that add your sites to all types of search engines. I think however, you have to pay the company if you want the site to appear near the front.
On google, you have to add keywords as well as the title when adding your site, say for example, my website would have keywords such as stunts, videos, entertainment etc... (www.stupidvideoclub.tk !!!)

 

I heard that google doesn't like stuff like javascript re-directs... i am the moment curious to another way to redirect the browser without the use of javascript. In ASP, there is response.redirect, but i mostly program in php which has

header("location: www.mysite.com");

However, the header in php is exactly that..a header, so putting it later on the script can cause issues. So anyone know of a better alternative?

But back to the question at hand. Google has "spiders" which crawl the web looking for links and adding them to their search engine. so you can add your site to their search engine by going to http://www.google.com.au/addurl.html. But that also takes a few months, just hang on for a while. I got my site as one of the first ones on the list, and it was the stupidest site i'd ever made..one of those fan sites for a band called "Five Iron Frenzy" which broke up.

Thats my 2 cents (I should charge more...).

 

google doesn't index by meta tags.

 

Search engine optimization is a pretty complicated field, with search engines changing their rules regularly. People have made careers out of it. There's no one surefire way to achieve success, just a few rough guidelines.

1. Choose your target search terms wisely

Choose a group of phrases which best describe the content of your site. You almost certainly have a better chance of results if you concentrate on phrases of 2 or 3 words. Single word searches in Google will usually return so many results that you have near to zero chance of getting onto the all-important first page of results. They must be phrases you can realistically imagine people would actually search for.
Now narrow down your list to 4 or 5 phrases maximum. Get an idea how many people actually do search for each phrase by using a free tool such as Overture's 'search term suggestion' tool on this page...
http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/about/sitemap.jhtml
Try your phrases at Google and note down the number of results. Too many (eg. 'Britney Spears' - 8 million) and you are wasting your time with that phrase.

2. Make sure these phrases appear a few times in your body text

Google is supposed to work out a ratio of how often a searched for phrase appears in a page in relation to the total number of words on it. This is an attempt to rate pages by their relevance to the search term.

You'll find many people banging on about getting the exact ratio. Don't worry too much about this, just make sure you don't stuff the page with your phrases. This will have the opposite effect to what you want, and will turn off any visitors who do find it.

Also, I wouldn't try tricks such as hiding reams of keywords by making the text the same colour as the background. They're wise to this one!

More weight is allegedly given to phrases near the top of the page, phrases in header tags and those which are emphasized (eg. in bold).

3. Include meta tags by all means, but...

Your description meta tag is used as the summary of your link on several search engines. Don't render this meaningless by stuffing it with keywords or no-one will click the link.

4. Optimize each page of your site, not just the homepage

Choose different phrases that are relevant to (and appear in) each page. Don't just copy the same ones throughout. Search engines don't just index your homepage!

5. Try to get other websites to link to yours

Especially sites with a high google pagerank - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank - but a small number of links to other websites.

Links from other sites to yours which use your chosen search phrase in the link text can boost your ranking in Google (unless they changed their rules recently?) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googlebomb

6. Don't give up if you don't achieve the desired result first time

Google, and the other engines, will periodically spider your website (every month or so in Google's case). Make changes then wait and see what effect it has. Keep at it!

Hope that helps

 

Shedlord,

Got a few questions for you. Turn on your PM's.



Thanks,

Steve

 

Ok, go for it.