The Basic Principle
- There are two types of search engine: the deep engine, like
Alta Vista and Infoseek, which sends out a robot to your site and saves
the info from your page itself, and then there's the standard engine
(also known as "directory") which doesn't use any info from your
page, only the info which you give it by way of an online submission form.
The most important of all search engines is Yahoo! and it's absolutely
vital to take extreme care when you submit to this one.
Building A Keyword List
- Before you touch anything, you have to decide which words are best
suited to the topic of your site. Think carefully because the key is to
match the words your potential visitors are likely to type into a search
engine. Users tend to be fairly general with their initial searches, then
they narrow it down. So, if you have a pet shop the keyword 'pets' is going
to be more powerful than 'dogs'.
You can choose between a short, powerful keyword list which is likely
to put you high up but with only a limited number of words, or you can
have a long list which will put you slightly lower, but with a broad spectrum
of keywords.
Now that you've got your list, here's what to do with it...
Tips On Keywords And Descriptions
- Describe your Web site, not your company. The name of
the game is getting Web site visitors. Once they've arrived you can talk
to your heart's content about your annual turnover or whatever.
- Empathise with your users. Think what they might be searching
for, which may not even be something you're actually selling but may be
related to something you're selling. The user may thank you for selling
them something better. The keywords are more important than the facts!
- Test your keywords. Search for each one on any search engine
and then examine the top few Web sites to see if there are any other keywords
you might like to add to your list.
- Plurals: always use the plurals of keywords. A user will search
for 'pet' or 'pets'. Your keyword 'pets' will match in both cases.
- Common words: don't use words like 'web', 'internet', 'services'
- if you think one of your words might be a common one, test it on Alta
Vista. If the response is something like:
ignored 19,152,057 services
then don't use that keyword!
- Keyword phrases: your keywords don't have to be one word. Users
often search for well-known phrases like 'web site promotion'. If your
topic has a natural phrase like this, use the words together as one keyword
phrase - in your META tag (enclose all 3 words between two commas), TITLE
and even URL.
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