Welcome to the search engine variables page. This page is to let you know what parts of a web page are important to search engines. Many people are unaware that parts of HTML coding will help your placement within the search engines. It can become quite technical and is an art form in itself. After a couple of years I have started to develop a "feel" of the search engine environment and industry. Although, you obviously don't want to be learning this stuff for 2 years that's why I am developing this page.
I will add different things to this page as an ongoing project, as I am still learning new and different things each and every day myself. Below is a list of things that you can look at within your web page coding, to try and enhance your chances of ranking higher within the search engines.
ALT Tags : These parts of your page are actually part of the <img> tag. Look at the image below and keep your mouse cursor over it until the popup appears:
The ALT tag in action looks something like this:
<img src="images/sevALT.jpg" alt="This is what the ALT section of the <img> tag does">
Placing keywords or phrases within your img tags will help add relevancy to your web page. ALT tags are used to describe a picture, but if you were to use these tags to describe your page (in moderation), you can boost your page up for a particular word or phrase.
NOTE : It is not a good idea to try and "spam" these sections of coding. Spam would include an ALT tag that is something like this:
<img src="images/sevALT.jpg" alt="spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam">
Repetition of words is a big no no for search engine spiders. It is quite easy for them to detect this sort of "keyword stuffing". Many engines wont accept 5 words in a row. So remember to use these tags conservatively and sensibly. This is one of the many different variables that search engines find important. Try and use these within your web page so that you have a higher chance of ranking highly within the search engines.
A HREF (or Hyperlinks) : Links can be helpful to identify the theme of your site. Having links pointing to sites that are relevant to your site can benefit your listing within the search engines also. This is known as link authority. Link authority means that your site is given authority to link to other sites that are relevant to your site.
NOTE : To gain link authority, you must have a substantial amount of sites linking to yours of the same category. This will make your site important, so links that are outbound from your site will be respected links.
Links can very well help your site get higher within the search engines. The link text that is used to display a link can greatly help your web page get ranked higher for your targetted phrase or keyword. The link text that you put with your hyperlink will work much like the ALT tags. The below example is optimized for "search engine optimization":
Search engine optimization here
The text in purple: "Search engine optimization" is the text that will have a higher weighting within the search engines as opposed to the words "search engine optimization" within the body of your page. Spiders find more importance in links as opposed to normal body text. So remember, as with the ALT tags, try not to spam them and flood them with repetition. Search engine optimization is usually about trial and error. Don't let your web page become a big error by trying to spam. Your site may be banned from all future submissions if this is the case.
Title : The title of your page is quite important in search engine ranking. Many people are unaware of this and can be seen within the below engines:
Altavista search results (Untitled document) for pages that have no title. (Adobe Page Mill and Macromedia Dreamweaver)
Google search results (Untitled document) for pages that have no title. (Adobe Page Mill and Macromedia Dreamweaver)
Altavista search results (new page) for pages that have no title. (Microsoft Frontpage)
Google search results (new page) for pages that have no title. (Microsoft Frontpage)
The title is one of the most important parts of your page. You should "ALWAYS" have a title for your pages. It should be one of the first things that you do. It is a very integral part in search engine ranking. As you can see from the above links there are millions of pages that have no title. This does not give any of these pages any justice. I mean, who is in their right mind going to search for "Untitled Document"? Would you put this into a search engine to find something? I doubt it, unless you want to see how many are untitled. Keywords in your title are very advantageous. The keywords in my title for this page are: "Search engine variables".
When constructing a title, try and think of your main keywords and phrases, plus also what sort of service/product your site offers. This way you can place the keywords you want in your page without being irrelevant and also being able to make sense. For example, you have a site in Perth, WA that has updated fishing information and news. You could maybe have a title like: "Updated fishing information and news in Perth WA". Again, remember not to spam this section of your page. As it is quite important to have keywords within your title, spamming them wont get you anywhere.
Moral of the story: "PUT A TITLE ON EVERYTHING!!"
Domain Name : Some search engines will count keywords within the domain name as important also. Have a look at my domain name, which is: search-engine-optimization-help.net. As you can see it has the words "search", "engine", "optimization" and "help". These are separated by the dash (-) this means that the search engines will class these as separate words. Again, in some search engines, the domain name or URL helps out with keyword boosting.
If you don't have a domain name, or can't afford one, you can always name the directories of your site something in line with your keyword selection.
e.g. You may have a site like mine about search engine optimization. You can set up your directory names to be something like this:
http://search-engine.freeservers.com/optimization/help.htm
or
http://www.geocities.com/username/search-engine/optimization-help.htm
In effect, you are manipulating the words "search", "engine", "optimization" and "help" just in different ways. Domain names have been proven to rank better than free sites, but don't let that put you off. Some free sites are very well ranked due to their link popularity and content. A domain name is just a nice little feature to have if you are serious about your search engine optimization.
Meta Tags : The meta tags are not as popular as they used to be, but are still important to some engines. As search engines are constantly changing their algorithms, they are starting to concentrate on the body of your pages as opposed to the meta tags. Google was one of the first engines to do this. Hence, using google you will find much more relevant pages of information after completing a search query (my personal favourite).
Meta tags reside in the <head> and </head> tags, and usually look like this:
<html>
<head>
<meta name="keywords" content="keyword1, keyword2, keyword3, .....">
<meta name="description" content="Short description about site goes here">
</head>
The keywords tag is used to identify keywords on your page. Try to keep these as relevant to your site as possible. It isn't a good idea to try and put keywords here that aren't on your page. For example, it would not be all that relevant to put the word "sex" into my keywords for this page, as you can see this page has absolutely nothing to do with "sex". This is one way people have tried to spam the search engines by writing keywords tags that are irrelevant to the site but are highly searched for. This doesn't work and is known as spamdexing. Also, try not to repeat keywords in this tag. You will only need a keyword in there once.
The description is used for search engines to summarize your site in most cases. (Google will find a snippet out of your body to use for the summary on a search query) It is therefore important to have an attractive and well worded description for people to read. If your description appeals to people, then it will most likely be clicked on. If you have no description for your site, it could hinder your chances of people clicking on your site from search engines. (why go to a site with no description, when the one below it has a detailed description?) These are some things to think about when creating your site.
These meta tags are the main tags that search engine spiders will look for if at all (except for the Robots tag). So the meta generator tag really means nothing to the search engines. Same with the author meta tag.
Heading tags : The heading tags are used by google to rate keywords highly. For example:
would rank higher than:
This line
Headings are also a good way of making your keywords or phrases stand out on your page. I know that google currently ranks heading tags higher than normal text on your page. It is a good idea to have your main keywords within heading tags on your page. Not only does it stand out to the user or viewer of your page, but also to the search engines. (I'm not sure how many engines actually use the heading tags for ranking) Yet again, I will point out that spamming this section of your pages will not help it very much.
Link Popularity : Link popularity is the measurement of the number of links within a particular search engine index that point to your site (for link popularity to be measured correctly, the sites linking to you, need to be in a search engine index or you don't receive the benefit of the link). Click here for a listing of my site's links within google. Basically, the more links you have to your website, the more popular your site is. Link popularity is a large factor in search engine ranking especially within google.
The hard thing about link popularity is getting the links. Usually the people that have sites that are relevant to your site, are your competitors. So it is hard to try and forge relationships between competitors to boost your link popularity.
Try and find your site in a search engine with the keywords that you would like to be targeted for. Look at the sites that rank highly. Check out the site ... if it is relevant to your site, grab the email address and give them a message. Also suggest areas that you may want to have your site linked on. For example, if there is a site with a links page to resources that you think your site falls under, suggest the area you would think that your site best fits into. This cuts down on the necessity for the webmaster to think of where to put the site. With fingers crossed, the more you do this, the more links you will get to your site. You will be surprised sometimes in how many people are willing to do this. You will stumble across the webmaster that remembered how the web used to be and will be more than happy to give you a link.
In the old days of the web, this is pretty much how everyone connected together. Now that we have high powered search engines to do this for us, we only use the engines mostly now to gather information about a topic we are interested in.
Remember, that courtesy and etiquette needs to be taken in requesting links. Always offer a link back to the page you are requesting a link from (why would I want to link to you if you don't link to me). This keeps webmasters happy. Also ask how they would like the link to look on your page. More often than not, you can negotiate the way a link is displayed on your/their site.
If at first you don't succeed, try and try again. Link building can be a long and arduous task, so don't expect to have 50 links out of nowhere. Also, try and get links to pages that are "related" to your site. This helps build relevancy for particular search terms.
Conclusion : That concludes the search engine variables section for the moment. There are many many more out there that are very technical that I will have to touch on later. (I'm still learning them!!!) Stay tuned and if there's anything you think that should be on this page, let me know.