In my previous column, I explained how to determine the optimal key phrase for your Web site as well as some online tools to help you with this process. As I have already mentioned, Search Engine Optimization is selecting keywords (or key phrases) that rank your Web site higher in the list of search engine results.
This month’s column focuses on some strategies you, or your Webmaster, can easily implement on your Web site to make keywords or key phrases work for you.
Which key phrase you select is of extreme importance to market your Web site effectively, but it is only the first step. Where your use the keyword phrase in the content of your Web pages is the next step, since it will also contribute (or not) to your search engine success.
One word of caution: I will be introducing some basic HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) terms, but don’t worry I will only present the basic principles that will impact you. Wikipedia defines HTML as “the predominant markup language for Web pages.”
Any Web page is composed of two parts: HTML code you don’t see and, after your Web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.) has interpreted this code, the resulting page you actually see. HTML uses bracketed code (<>) in the form of labels (known as tags), to define the appearance and semantics of a Web page. Search engines “read” this code when they spider cyber space.
Title Tags
Search engines place huge importance on the title tag of a Web page. The title tag of your Web page describes its contents for search engines, or what product or service is represented by that Web page. Due to its importance, the title tag should contain your most important keywords and be fewer than 63 characters. Often, a title tag will include the company’s name, or even “Welcome to our Web site!” This practice is useless; people will not search your business by using its name (unless they already know it).
The content of your title tag is critical. It is also the link from the results page, as displayed by the search engine. Ideally your domain name and your title page will be the same.
Header Tags
Header tags are also important. The <h1> tag should be used as the title of your content. Ideally, it will contain the same words as the page title above. The other tags follow in order of importance. You should only have one <h1> in your page. For example:
Body Text
The body text is the main content of your Web page and it comes next in importance. It is beneficial to include the keywords throughout your content to improve your position in a search results.
The ideal number of body text on a page is 200 to 300 that emphasize two or three carefully selected keywords (key phrases). I suggest that you place the most relevant keyword-rich text in the top one third of the page. Search engines read the source code linearly from top to bottom, which is why the headers and the first paragraph are crucial. Place images and other items, such as animations and movies, further down the page.
Link Anchor Text
This is the visible text attached to a hyperlink, for example, “Website Resources for Karate Schools.” Keywords, placed in the anchor text of links to other pages on your site, receive a higher priority than other text. If your keywords are used as anchor text links from other Web sites to yours, then they carry even more weight. Whenever possible, try to influence which keywords are being used in the link anchor text on other sites that link to yours.
