Search Engine Success

Keywords
The real trick is to choose the right words - what will your target audience be typing into the search query box? Use your chosen keywords as often as you can throughout your site. As well as using them as META tags try to get them into everything - your domain name, folder and page names, <IMAGE ALT> tags and hidden <FORM> tags. Use your keywords in text on your pages and use them early! Get straight to the point about what your site can offer on your homepage - your target audience will be far more interested in your product, not an irrelevant company history. Check your competitors' keywords and copy the good ones... and try to pick up any likely miss-spellings too!

Flash, JavaScript and Splash Pages
Web design is full of compromise and this is a major fork in the road. Search engines favour relevant text high on the html page. Unfortunately visually attractive Flash introductions and JavaScript code will not help to boost your position and to make matters worse their code will normally be inserted at the top of the page, pushing whatever relevant text may appear further down your page and reducing its impact on search engines. An initial 'splash' page with just images and a 'click to enter' link to your site will also score poorly as keywords featured on your first page are most weighted in the search results.

Frames
Descriptive text about your site must be included in the <NOFRAMES> part of the code as the search engines read this, not the individual pages which will be loaded into frames.

Forbidden Tricks
Early webmasters tried to improve their position in search results by hiding keywords in text coloured the same as its background, in very small text and with text off the visible area of the page. Such practice now will be punished by most search engines and may even get your site banned from the search engine. Duplicate pages or sites and multiple submissions are also taboo.

Database Sites
If your site uses Dreamweaver Ultradev or a similar solution to deliver dynamically produced pages, the search engines will not list the content of such pages. You will need to get the pages generated as static pages from time to time or get the server to define the variable so that the search engines can read past the default '?' used in the URL.

Many of these tips were printed in Internet.Works magazine Dec 2000, contributed by Simon Conroy of www.topwebsite.co.uk. For an important site it may be cost effective to employ a specialist company to ensure that your site is designed from the outset to be attractive to the vital search engines.

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