Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization means improving the chances that your web pages will be found by the search engines. The term "search engine" is often used generically to describe both crawler-based search engines and human-powered directories. These two types of search engines gather their listings in different ways.

Crawler-Based Search Engines

Crawler-based search engines, such as Google, create their listings with ”robot” programs that "crawl" or "spider" the web. The pages that are displayed on a search are based on what the “robots” find. If you change your web pages, crawler-based search engines eventually find these changes, and this can effect how your web site is listed. Page titles, meta tags, body copy and other page elements all impact your page ranking.

People-Powered Directories

A human-powered directory, such as Yahoo, depends on people for its listings. You submit a short description to the directory for your entire site. A search looks for matches only in the descriptions you submit. Changing your web pages has no effect on your listing.

Hybrid Search Results

It is now common for a search engine to present both human-powered listings and crawler-based results. Usually mixed search results favor one type of listings over another. For example, Yahoo first presents its human-powered listings, but it also presents crawler-based results from Google.

Search Relevancy

Crawler-based search engines determine page relevancy by following a set of rules, known as an algorithm. Although exactly how a particular search engine's algorithm works is a closely-kept trade secret all major search engines follow these general criteria.

Keywords - Location and Frequency

One of the the main criteria in a page ranking algorithm involves the location and frequency of keywords on a web page.

Pages with the search terms appearing in the HTML title tag are considered more relevant to a search than other pages. Search engines also consider web pages with keywords near the top of the page,  such as in the headline or the first few paragraphs of text, to be more relevant to the search topic.

In addition to location of keywords, frequency is the other major factor in how search engines determine relevancy. A search engine will analyze how often keywords appear in relation to other words in a web page. Those with a higher frequency are often deemed more relevant than other web pages. HOWEVER, we must point out that having too high a frequency will offend both your reader and the search engines. This is considered “spamming” a search engine and will actually lower your page ranking.

Search engines, and people scanning your web page, want to quickly find the specific information they are looking for on that page. The information they are looking for are the “keyword phrases” you compiled when writing your web site description. These key phrases play an important role in obtaining a high search engine ranking, and getting the reader to stay on your web site.

The page title tag is the most important location for your keyword phrases.  Not only does this count for a lot in the search engine rankings, its the first line people see displayed in the listings. This tag has the double duty of catching the attention of the search engines and influencing a person to click on your listing. These 8 to 10 words must include your target keywords, starting with the most important.

Your page headline should include your most important key phrases and encourage your reader to read your web page. Work your list of key phrases into the first few paragraphs in a way that makes the page relevant to the search engines while being easy for your reader to follow.

Meta Tags

Meta tags are not as important as they used to be for search engine ranking because many of the search engines don’t use them as part of their ranking criteria. Even so, its good to its still good to have a short list of your important keywords in the keyword tag. The description tag may actually be more important as some of the engines still use this under the title to describe your site in their listings. Since you need a short description when you submit your web site to directories, it only takes a couple minutes to add this tag to your web site.

Description tag - provides a description of the search engine to show with your listing.

Keywords tag - provides keywords for the search engine to associate with your page.

Popularity and Click-Through

Some search engines, Google in particular, consider how “popular” a web page is by analyzing how many pages link to that page to determine how “important” it is. More popular pages will get a ranking boost. Another way some search engines adjust ranking is with click-through measurement. In short, this means that a search engine may watch what results someone selects for a particular search, then eventually drop high-ranking pages that aren't attracting clicks, while promoting lower-ranking pages that do pull in visitors.

Now that you understand a little about how the search engines work, lets check out some tools you can use to make this process easier.