[Sigia-l] Techniques for Search Engine Optimization [SEO]

[eddy at eddykim.com]

Patrick,

There are a few basic things you can do to optimize your customer's search
engine rankings - some of which are related to tags and keywords.

-- Title Tag --
The title tag has a very high relevance rating for most search engines. It's a
good idea to come up with a keyword-rich title tag (70-75 characters). Make
sure this title tag is descriptive and not just a list of your keywords.
(Search engines don't like this practice and may penalize you in the rankings).
It's also best that the Title Tag text be unique for each page in your site (or
at least the most important pages).

-- Body Text, headings, links --
Try to use keyword combinations where appropriate in the body as these will
likely be indexed by crawlers. Most search engines will give a higher weighting
to any heading tags "<H1>" so make sure to utilize your targeted keywords in
these tags. Many sites use graphics for headings. This is a
liability because crawlers cannot index images. Although crawlers will index the
contents of an image's Alt Tag, it is still not weighted as high as body or
heading text... so try to use text headings.

Text towards the top of the page will be more likely to get indexed by crawlers
than text and the bottom of the page. Also, text at the top is usually weighted
higher in importance than text towards the bottom of the page.

Text in links are considered more relevant than plain text by most search
engines. This makes it a good opportunity to utilize your targeted keywords
here. Some search engines may also consider text that is in close proximity to
the link to be of higher relevance too.

-- Directories --
Try to get your site listed in a major directory like Yahoo! This all goes
towards helping with your link popularity but it also contrbutes to link
quality. Crawlers are beginning to look at the quality of the sites you are
linked to in their ranking algorithms. A word of caution: Make sure the site
you are linked to is a high-quality site and not just a link farm (a site who's
only purpose is to try to manipulate the link popularity method). If a search
engine catches wind of this, you could be blacklisted from the rankings (or at
least penalized in rankings).

-- Meta Tags --
Meta keyword tags aren't a good way to get your site noticed anymore. Too many
people have abused them and most search engines don't weigh this into their
ranking algorithms now. The link popularity method has taken over because it's
hard for webmasters to manipulate. You should, however, still define them for
those search engines that still consider them. Also, the meta description tag
should still be defined because this is the text that will most likely display
if you get listed on a website directory like Yahoo!

A good book for more information on this is: Shari Thurow's "Search Engine
Visibility". The following sites will also help: http://www.searchengines.com
and http://www.pandia.com.

Hope that helps.

-ed

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