Thursday, March 05, 2009

Search Engine Food, Feed the Beasts!

My youngest son can eat! I mean eat! If you put food in front of him, watch out. Only a few minutes past a meal he wants more. Just like my child you need to be sure that you are feeding the search engines at every corner. Each and every page of your Web site is important to search engines and each page must contain food in the form of key word and key phrase data. Each page of your site is important. All to often people place so much effort on their main page that they forget about the others. With that same point in mind, simply repeating the information from your main page to the remaining pages of your site is no smart either. Each word of text is food for the search engine spiders. (Spiders are automated robots that scan your site and bring back data to the search engine database,) This is why you will often search for a seemingly simple word and get back pages from some very odd Web sites. Just like my mom, they see all and no all!

Here are some things to consider when optimizing your pages for search engine spiders.
1. Focus on 10 key words or less that describe the content of your Web site or 10 key words of phrases that people will search for when trying to find your site.
2. Make sure that these key words or key phrases are in your meta data on your site.
3. Make sure that the top 5 key words or phrases from your list are in the title tag of your web page.
4. Make sure that these 10 words are also in the text of your main page. Also, it is better to have these key words in the top 20 lines of your Web page.
5. Create unique pages within your Web site that contain your key words. For example, if one of your 10 key words is “baby dolls”. Write an article that mentions baby dolls in 7-10% of the text. Place this page within your site and be sure that there is a physical link from the main page to that page on your site.
6. Remember, most search engines spiders can not get to pages that are linked from drop down menu’s in your site navigation. To solve this problem you need a site map or an XML map.

The old thought that if 10 key words are good then 20 must be better does not work! You need to focus and not try to be something to everybody. Pick your 10 and push them hard through out your Web site.

Concerned that you are not doing enough to get your site noticed online? Ask for help from the internet experts at Brain Swell Media. Need some help with your online strategy? Want to make money from your Web site? Contact Ryan and the Brain Swell Media team today. ryan@brainswellmedia.com or 803-634-3886.