How do I get my web pages to rank higher in the search engines?
Search engine optimization is a phrase bounced around these days that you've probably heard. It basically means peppering your web page content with key words.
Meta tags are also used to embed the key words. There is a strategy that needs to be followed when installing meta. For example, too many key words in your meta tags dilute the effectiveness. Key words selected for a page need to be part of meta descriptions, alt images, links, page titles and head tags as well as sprinkled throughout the content.
Many browsers ignore meta tags altogether, so your web page should include body comment tags with key words and rich descriptions.
Most search engines will eventually locate your web page and index your content in their database. You can speed this process up by submitting your page to each search engine. But you must meet the search engines submission requirements. Check your cpanel for a submission tool for a couple of basic submissions, but keep in mind there are over a thousand search engines today.
In cpanel locate, Search Engine Submit. Click on it and you see a small list of search engines:
alltheweb
directhit
google
hotbot
lycos
mixcat
Enter your full URL in the first field starting with http://www.
Enter an email address that you don't regularlly use. as you will get a significant amount of email verifications and continuing email messages from these search engines. You won't want to flood your main email account.
The comments field should include a brief 25-40 word description of your home page. This description is what viewers will read in the found list when they use a key word to search for products and services.
Finally, choose the language, country and category. Avoid "other" category if possible.
Submit and you're done.
This submission tool only covers some search engines. Subscribe to DMC's search engine marketing program if you want DMC to regularly submit your web pages to all top search engines. See http://www.dm-creative.com/businesssolutions/Marketing/
Submissions to search engines help your URL land in the "found page" when someone searches for your key word.
Another significant factor is the structural language and presentation elements used to develop your web pages.
On the Internet, the amount of markup in comparision to actual useful information is astonishing on some web pages. Markup is almost enirely made up of tables and font elements, none of which conveys any real semantic meaning to what's being presented. From a structural standpoint, these page are little better than random strings of letters.
Unstructured pages make content indexing inordinately difficult. A truly powerful search eninge would allow users to search only page titles, or only section headings within pages, or only paragraph text, or perhaps only those paragraphs that are marked as being important. In order to accomplish such a feat, however, the page contents must be contained within some sort of structural markup -- exactly the sort of markup most pages lack. Google, for example, does pay attention to markup structure when indexing pages, so a structural page will increase your Google rank.
The problem of polluting HTML with presentational markup becomes even more significant as the web evolves.
a) HTML has already started to phase out a number of elements and eventually they will be marked as obsolete. This means that browsers will be neither required nor encouraged to support them.
b) There is a strong possibility that HTML will gradually be replaced by Extensible Markup Language (XML) which is more powerful and flexible. Websites will need to be XML-based. |
