The remainder of this article walks you step-by-step through this process.

         Search engines use programs or intelligent agents, called bots, to actually search the Internet for pages that they index using specific parameters as they read the content. The agent reads the information on every page of your site and then follows the links. For example, Google’s spiders continually crawl the Web looking for sites to index and, of course, index sites upon their submission. Google is obviously very important in the search engine community, so be sure your site is easily accessible to its spider. A detailed discussion on submissions to search engines and directories can be found in the next articles.                                                                                                                                     Registering with search engines is fairly simple. In most cases, you simply have to submit your URL or Internet address on their submission form. Even if your URL is not registered with search engines, a number of the major search engines will eventually find you, as their bots are continually roaming the Internet looking for new sites to index. Your odds of being indexed increase significantly if you have a well-developed links strategy. There are millions of sites out there, so I suggest that you be proactive and register your site to ensure a speedier listing. Once you are registered, some of the bots will periodically visit your site looking for changes and updates.

             A common problem faced by Internet marketers is how to influence search engines to index their site appropriately and how to ensure that their site appears when people use relevant search criteria. Many of the interesting and creative sites on the Internet are impossible to find because they are not indexed with the major search engines. The majority (85 percent) of Internet users employ search engines or directories to find what they are looking for on the Web. They do this by typing in a keyword or phrase that represents what they are looking for. Usually people use a two- or three-keyword phrase. The following sections explore how to make your Web site more search engine friendly.

            Many search engines and directories either partner with or license the use of the search technology of another search engine or directory. If you submit your site to a search engine that uses Google’s index, then the design of your site influences how you’re indexed in all search engines that rely on Google for their search results. For example, Google’s results can be found on AOL, Netscape, HotBot, Lycos, and more. Google’s paid advertising results appear on many other sites as well.

            In a similar fashion, you often find other search engine and directory data intermixed or included in some form with the data of another search engine or directory. To take this example further, some search engines are built on the premise of pooling the search results of many search providers and presenting the results to the end user—they do not maintain their own index, but rather manipulate the results of many other search engines in hopes of providing a better search experience. This type of search tool is called a meta-search engine. Dogpile (http://www.dogpile.com) is an example of a meta-search engine.

           When designing your site, you must always keep the search engines in mind. Something as simple as a DHTML drop-down menu on your site or a Flash intro can cause problems with the search engines and the indexing of your site if implemented incorrectly. You want to do everything you can to ensure that your site is designed to meet the needs of your target audience while remaining completely search engine friendly. Search engines can produce a significant amount of traffic to your site if you can manage to be placed in the top search results. 

         You want to select a number of the most popular search engines for your concentration. You also want to be indexed in topic-specific search engines for your industry. You can find the most popular search engines by doing your research online through sites. You can keep up with what’s happening in the search engines by joining one of the many discussion lists on the topic. As it stands at the time of this writing, the major players in the search engine industry are:

            Each search engine has its own unique ranking criteria and its own unique algorithm, or formula, giving different weighting to each of the criteria in its formula. For the search engines that you have decided to focus on, you have to learn as much as you can about their ranking criteria and relative weighting.The site with the highest score appears at the top of the results and the rest appear in descending order of their score.

         The search engines are all fighting for market share. The more market share a search engine has, the more valuable the company is. To gain market share,a search engine has to provide better results than its competition. It is for this reason that the search engines are changing and improving their formulas on an ongoing basis. You have to keep up with changes in these formulas, tweak your site accordingly, and resubmit when necessary. The search engines use different databases for their search results. They

have different algorithms or formulas for their ranking. They have different weighting for the various elements within their formula. They change their formulas over time and they change their ranking over time. Sound complicated?

        Things have changed quite a bit from the early days. Elements that used to have significant weighting may now have very little weight. You have to remember that it is the highest total score you are looking for, so even if an element has reduced weighting, if the element has any points at all you want to incorporate that element to maximize your total score. Sometimes the top sites are within a small number of points of each other.

        It is not as daunting as it might sound, because the major search engines tend to look at similar information but weight the relevancy for particular items differently in their algorithms. That having been said, here are the most important areas on a Web page that you must address when performing organic search engine optimization:

          Page titles and text-based page content are the most important of the noted placement areas. Keyword meta-tags are not as critical as they once were, but are still applicable for some engines. Remember—it is the absolute highest score you are looking for; if there are any points available, you want to design your site to take advantage of them.

          Because Google is the favorite search engine for the time being, let’s take a closer look at how it ranks pages. Google uses its internal index for its primary search listings. Google has many other features as well, some of which include:

         The ranking formula for Google’s main search function looks for the keywords in the visible body text, header tags, title tags, hypertext links, and Alt tags. Google gives a very heavy weighting to the link popularity, with extra points for quality of links and relevancy of text around the links. Google also has miscellaneous points available for such things as:

       Most of the search engines are giving heavy weighting to link popularity— that is, the number of links to your site from other sites on the Internet. The search engines are getting very sophisticated in the weighting of link popularity, with the search engines giving extra points for link relevancy—that is, how high the site with the link to your site would rank for the same keyword. Other points are awarded based on the keywords in the text around the link pointing to your Web site. For strategies on generating significant links to your site, see in the next articles.

         Keywords are the terms and phrases that your target market uses when searching the major search engines and directories for the products and services you sell. Your keywords are used in everything you do and are the key determining factor in how you rank in the search results among many of the major search engines.

         A critical step in natural search engine optimization is to select the right keywords for your business, products, or services (including descriptive words), and your target market. Understand whom you are targeting and build your search engine optimization efforts around your audience.

         You need to choose keyword phrases that are going to bring sustainable targeted traffic consisting of potential customers—not just anything and everything. What you may think is the perfect keyword phrase may not be used at all by your target market in their search queries, which is why it is so critical to research and validate your keywords.

        Ideally, each page of your Web site is going to focus on a different set of keywords that are specific to the content at hand. If you were to focus on the same set of keywords on every page, then you would hit only one small portion of your market potential because you are only going to hit those same keywords over and over again—it is self-defeating.

        First, you want to gather a master list of all possible keyword phrases. To make the data easier to manage, you can create different keyword list profiles that represent individual topics as opposed to trying to cover all topics in a giant master list. For example, if you have two product lines, you can create a keyword list for each. Naturally, some keywords are shared across the lists, but it is important to understand that the people looking for one topic (for instance, “jobs”) are not necessarily the same people looking for another topic (let’s say, “trucks”), and as such they are going to use different keyword combinations in their searches.

          How do you create your master keyword list? Here are four solid techniques for generating a list of potential keyword phrases:

            Be sure to record the keywords you gather in a text document in your wordprocessing program or in a spreadsheet. Including them in a spreadsheet or

database makes them much easier to sort when it comes time to prioritize the

keywords and weed out the junk.

            As you work your way through the list of techniques, you want to cycle back to some of the techniques because you will come across search terms that can expand the scope of your original efforts and open the door to new, more targeted phrases that you might have missed the first time around.

Brainstorming, Surveying, and Reviewing Promotional Material
            At this stage, the idea is to gather all the keyword phrases you can, within reason. Sit down with a pen and paper and jot down all keywords that come to mind. Bring other members of your team in on this process to fuel ideas. There is nothing scientific or technical to be concerned with here—the sky’s the limit, but try to put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Try to think as your target market would if they were to do a search for information on a topic contained within your site. Do not just think about what

people would do to find your site, but what they would do if they didn’t know your business existed and were looking for the types of products and services you sell.

            Here are several questions to help you with your brainstorming process:

        Your current corporate materials, brochures, and other marketing collateral can be a valuable source of keyword phrases. Begin by indiscriminately highlighting any words that people might search for if they are looking for products or services your company has to offer.
        To assist you in developing your keyword list, consider asking your customers

for their input. Ask what keywords they might use to find a site like yours.

You can always turn to a thesaurus for additional ideas if you get stumped.

        Check out your online competition. The term competition is referenced quite

loosely in that industry leaders with whom you may not directly compete are

also included here. Look at the sites for which you have a record and look for

sites in the major search engines using some of the keyword phrases you have

gathered so far.

       You want to see what sites are in the top 10 positions and understand them.

By reviewing top-ranking Web sites, you can look for themes and patterns in

the sites that give you a good indication of what they are going after and how

they are doing it. You can then turn around and apply this newfound knowledge

to your own Web site.

       When reviewing competing Web sites, you should look at the same general

areas you would optimize on your own Web site. As mentioned earlier, the most

critical keyword placement areas include:

         Check to see what meta-tags your competitors have. Not only can you learn from the sites that catch your eye, you can also learn from your competitors’ mistakes. After you have done a thorough job of this market research, you are in a good position to develop a description that is catchy and adequately describes your site.

         To check your competition’s meta-tags in Microsoft Internet Explorer, you simply go to their site, then click “View” on your menu bar, and select “Source” from the drop-down menu. This brings up the source code for that page in whatever your default text browser is. Pay special attention to the title tag of the top-ranked Web sites. To get a little more specific, you can narrow your search to keywords in a title tag. The reason for doing this is that optimizing a title tag is a given when it comes to search engine optimization, so it only makes sense to look at who else is doing it as well. On Google you can enter “allintitle: keyword phrase,” without the quotes, to search for all pages with the noted keywords in their title tag. This approach is a little more focused than simply looking for all pages with a certain set of keywords because the keywords might just be there in passing, as a part of an article, and not something the site is intentionally trying to target. If the keywords are found in the title tag, there is a better chance their reason for being there is intentional.

As noted earlier, you can learn not only from the sites that catch your eye, but also from your competitors’ mistakes.

        Your Web site traffic logs can be a source of pertinent keyword information. You can view your traffic logs to see what search terms and search engines people are using to locate your Web site and to help you fine-tune future search engine optimization efforts.

        If you are not sure whether you have access to a Web site traffic analysis program, check with your current Web site host to see if they provide one to you. If not, there are plenty of tools available to you.
        Understand that the search terms displayed may not be the most relevant; they just happen to be the search terms people are executing to find your site during the selected time frame. Applying new search engine optimization techniques with relevant keywords changes how people find your Web site. The Web site traffic analysis package you use gives you the power to measure the impact of your optimization efforts.

      Your traffic logs can be a source of inspiration for generating your master keyword list. Note the search terms people are currently using and add them to your list. For a more complete look at the search phrases reported on your Web site, expand the date range to cover a larger spread—say, over the period of a year.
      When your site is optimized, your Web traffic analysis tool will become your best friend in monitoring your success.

Keyword Suggestion and Evaluation Tools
      There are a number of services available that can help you with selecting the most appropriate keywords for your site. These services base their suggestions on results from actual search queries. Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com) is an example of such a service.

         Keyword research tools can help meet your current needs, whether you’re looking for a place to start, are plum out of ideas, or simply feel like you’re missing something.

        Now that you have your master keyword list, probably with a few hundred keyword phrases, you have to drill down and figure out which keywords you are going to target for each page of your Web site that you want to optimize. Keep in mind that each page you optimize should lean toward a different set of keywords. Why? What good is buying 100 lottery tickets for the next drawing if they all have the same number? It is the same idea here.
        Your efforts should focus around those keyword phrases that bring in a fair volume of traffic and that are highly targeted. The return on investment for such keywords will be much higher. When reviewing your keyword list, you need to consider:

         For a car dealership to have the keyword car stand alone on the dealership’s Web site would prove a waste of effort. Car is a vastly popular keyword, which is good, but it is too generic and too competitive to be worthwhile. You have to make judgment calls from time to time. In some cases a word is relevant and popular, but also competitive to the point of being intimidating. If this word is essential to your business, however, then go for it. 

      Organize your keywords according to their level of importance. When completed, you will have a refined master keyword list that you can refer to when optimizing your Web site. Also, different directories allow different numbers of keywords to be submitted. Because you have organized the list with the most important words first, you can simply include as many of your keywords as the directory allows.

          You can begin editing the list by deleting words that either are too generic (for example, business) or are not appropriate for keyword purposes. Review each word and ask yourself, “Would people search using this word if they were looking for the products and services available through my Web site?”

          For each page that you are optimizing, take a copy of the comprehensive master list and delete words that are not appropriate for that particular page. Reprioritize the remaining keywords based on the content of the page you are indexing. Now take the keyword phrase you have assigned to this page and put it at the top of the list. This is the keyword list for that particular page. Repeat this procedure for every page you are optimizing. This is also a great procedure when you are developing the keyword meta-tag for each page of your site.

        What I just covered is a very basic approach to organizing keywords. If you are up to the challenge, you can take it further by adding weights and multipliers to your keyword list to further refine it. You can choose to keep it basic while you are learning the ropes, but as

you become more familiar you might want to be more critical in selecting your keywords, to boost your performance in the search engines. The more knowledge you are armed with, the better prepared you are to optimize your Web site. Here are some additional tips to keep in mind when refining your keywords master list:

           Not only are multiple-keyword phrases used more often by searchers, but using them also enables you to be more descriptive in the modifiers to your keyword phrases.

search engine optimization. You then populate each page in the appropriate places with the assigned keyword. You do this because you want to ensure that no matter which keyword or keyword phrase your target market decides to search on, one of the pages on your site is likely to rank in the first couple of pages of search results.

           Many sites populate all their pages with the same keywords in the hopes that one of their pages will rank high in the search results. They use the same meta-tags for every page on their site. Again, this is the same as buying 100 tickets on the lottery but selecting the same numbers for every single ticket.
          Some search engines rank sites by how early the keyword appears on the site. The earlier a keyword is mentioned on your site, the more points earned and the higher your site may be positioned in search results. And remember what was stressed earlier: Though you don’t want to repeat a keyword hundreds of times (some search engines are on to this), you do want to repeat the keywords assigned to that particular page a number of times on that page of your site.

          When you have allocated your keywords to the various pages on your site, you will populate or include the keyword phrases assigned in the appropriate places for that particular page. Let’s take a closer look at all those appropriate places.

Title Tags—Use Descriptive Page Titles

         It is extremely important that all Web pages have titles. Title tags are viewed as one of the most important elements of search engine optimization when it comes to keyword placement. Each of the pages on your Web site should be given a title.

        The title is inserted between the title tags in the header of an HTML document. <HEAD> indicates the beginning of the header, and the ending of the header is marked by </HEAD>. A simplified version might look like:

          Title tag information identifies and describes your pages. Titles tell readers where the information contained on a page originated. Most Web browsers display a document’s title in the top line of the screen. When users print a page from your Web site, the title usually appears at the top of the page at the left. When someone bookmarks your site or adds it to their “Favorites,” the title appears as the description in his or her bookmark file. These are all reasons that it is important that a page’s title reflect an accurate description of the page. More importantly, the title tag is typically what the target market sees in search

results in some of the major search engines. In Figure 2.3 you can see that a typical search result consists of the title tag as the link to the Web site, a brief description of the Web site, and the URL.

              Every page of your Web site should have a unique title tag and each title tag should accurately describe the page content. Your target market should be able to read the title tag and understand what the page they are about to view contains. Keep your title tags brief—in the realm of five to ten words. The longer your title tag is, the more diluted your keywords become and the more likely your title tag is to be truncated by a search engine. Google displays a maximum of 66 characters. Yahoo!Search, on the other hand, permits up to 120 characters for a title tag. Presently Google and Yahoo!Search are the two most important search engines; use their requirements as an approximation when designing

your title tag
           My advice is to include your most important keyword phrases first, within Google’s 66-character range. Overspill, or less important keywords, can run into the excess space that Yahoo!Search allows. By including your most important keywords first, you secure their position for use by the search engines and for browser bookmarks.

          The shorter and more accurate the title tag is, the higher the keyword density and relevancy for that title tag. Try to keep your use of a keyword phrase to a single instance if possible, unless the title tag truly warrants duplication. In the case of a hotel, the word hotel might appear twice in a title—once for the hotel’s proper company name and once in a descriptive term such as a targeted geographic area.

           Match the keywords you use in your meta-tags with the words you use in your page titles. Search engines check page titles, meta-tags, and page content for keywords. For certain keywords, your pages will be more relevant and, therefore, will place higher in the search engines if these keywords appear in each of these three sections. Position your keywords near the beginning of your page titles to increase your keyword relevancy.

          Some of the search engines retrieve your page, look at your title, and then look at the rest of your page for keywords that match those found in the title. Many search engines use title tags as one of the elements in their algorithm to determine search engine ranking. Pages that have keywords in the title are seen as more relevant than similar pages on the same subject that don’t, and may thus be ranked in a higher position by the search engines. However, don’t make your title a string of keywords because this is often  considered spam by the search engines and you end up worse off in the rankings or removed altogether. Also keep in mind that people will see that title in the search results, and they’re more likely to click on a site that has a title that flows and is descriptive—not a list.

Keywords Meta-Tag

           As we noted earlier in this article, a common problem faced by Internet marketers is how to influence search engines to index their site appropriately and how to ensure that their site appears when people use relevant search criteria.

           Retaining a certain measure of control over how search engines deal with your Web site is a major concern. Often Web sites do not take advantage of the techniques available to them to influence search engine listings. Most search engines evaluate the HTML meta-tags in conjunction with other variables to decide where to index Web pages based on particular keyword queries.
           Although in recent years fewer points have been allocated to content in the keywords meta-tags, it is important to keep your eyes on the total score—if there are any points at all allocated to this element, you want them all. As we’ve already mentioned, the site with the highest total score appears at the top of the search results, so you are going after every point you can get.

          The Web Developer’s Virtual Library defines an HTML meta-tag as follows:

The META element is used within the HEAD element to

embed document meta-information not defined by other HTML

elements. The META element can be used to identify properties of

a document (e.g., author, expiration date, a list of keywords, etc.)

and assign values to those properties.

An HTML tag is used in the HEAD area of a document to

specify further information about the document, either for the

local server or for a remote browser. The meta-element is used

within the HEAD element to embed document meta-information

not defined by other HTML elements. Such information can be

extracted by servers/clients for use in identifying, indexing, and

cataloging specialized document meta-information. In addition,

HTTP servers can read the contents of the document HEAD to

generate response headers corresponding to any elements defining

a value for the attribute HTTP-EQUIV. This provides document

authors with a mechanism for identifying information that should

be included in the response headers of an HTTP request.

          To summarize this lengthy definition, meta-information can be used in identifying,

indexing, and cataloging. This means you can use these tags to guide the

search engines in displaying your site as the result of a query. There are many

meta-tags, including:

         Most of these meta-tags are not useful for optimization purposes. The most recognized meta-tag is the keywords meta-tag. <META-NAME=“keywords” CONTENT=“…”> tells search engines under which keywords to index your site. When a user types one of the words you listed here, your site should be displayed as a result. A space or comma can be used to separate the words. Do not repeat the keyword frequently; rather, repeat the keyword about five times in different phrases. You do have the option of using more than 1,000 characters in your keywords meta-tag, but be wary of keyword dilution. You should create a unique keywords tag for each page of your site that lists the appropriate keywords for that particular page.

           <META-NAME=“description” CONTENT=“…”> should be included on every page of your Web site. The description meta-tag is used to supply an accurate overview of the page to which it is attached. The description meta-tags can influence the description in the search engines that support them. It is best to keep the description meta-tag to somewhere between 200 to 250 characters in total. Be sure to use the same keywords applied elsewhere on the page being optimized in the description meta-tag for consistency and relevancy; however, do not duplicate your title tag in your description meta-tag, or you may run the risk of being accused of keyword stacking. Also, it helps to include a call to action encouraging the target market to visit your Web site or take some other action.

          Some search engines use the information within Alt tags when forming a description

and determining the ranking for your site. Alt tags are used to display a description of the graphic they are associated with if the graphic cannot be displayed, such as in text-only browsers. Alt tags appear after an image tag and contain a phrase that is associated with the image.

          Ensure that your Alt tags contain the keywords assigned to the particular page wherever you can. This gives your page a better chance of being ranked higher in the search engines. For example: <image src=“images/logo.gif” height=“50” width =“50”

alt=“Best Western Hotel Orlando”>

          You do not want your Alt tags to look something like “Best Western” or “Company Logo” because this does not include any keywords. Be sure you apply proper Alt tags to all images on your site to achieve best results. Keep in mind that users who browse with graphics disabled must be able to navigate your site, and proper use of Alt tags assists them in doing so.

          A hypertext link consists of the description of a link placed between anchor tags. Here is an example of an absolute link, where the link includes the total path to where the document can be found:
<a href=“http://www.DomainName.com/HotelOrlando”>. This is the anchor text for the sample link</A>.

         The text inside a hyperlink, or anchor text, is increasingly important for search engine optimization. The major search engines have points available for including the keyword phrase being searched on in the text around the link pointing to your Web site. There is a strong relevancy pattern.
        Good places to use links include the primary and subnavigation aspects of a Web site, as well as links to external resources from within the page copy. Likewise, if links on other Web sites pointing to your Web site include the same string of keywords, your site’s relevancy gets a boost. When you encourage other Web sites to link to yours, be sure to provide them with the link text they should use, and make sure you get the keyword phrase you have assigned to that particular page in the text around the link. Similarly, when you submit your Web site to directories and other link sources, provide the comparable link

or title text.

         Use of keywords within your domain name and file names can help with search engine positioning. Some professionals argue that including dashes to separate keywords makes it easier for search engines to distinguish keywords, which can help boost your rankings. Personal experience leads me to believe that if it actually does make a difference, the difference is so small that you are better off spending your time optimizing your Web site in areas that really count. This also applies to file names.

         Examples of domain names are:

1. www.thisisadomainname.com

2. www.this-is-also-a-domain-name.com.

Examples of file names are:

1. www.thisisadomainname.com/samplepage.html

2. www.thisisadomainname.com/sample-page.html.

       It does not take much effort to give your images and file names meaningful names—names that include the keyword phrase you have assigned to that page— so take the time to do it. For example, instead of a car dealership, say Chrysler, using http://www.chrysler.com/index.html for a page that is focusing on their trucks, it would be much better to use http://www.chrysler.com/trucks.

Body Text—Header Tags and Page Copy

      The body text of a Web page consists of all the visible text between the <body>

and </body> tag, such as headings and the page copy encased in paragraphs.

Along with page titles, body text is the next important area on which to focus

your search engine optimization efforts. Body text is where you want to spend

the bulk of your time.

         Use your HTML <H1> header tags effectively to indicate the subject and content

of a particular page. Most people use them only as a method of creating

large fonts. Some search engines, including Google, use the content included

within the header text in their relevancy scoring. The H1 tag is the most important,

followed by H2. Include your most important keywords in your header

tags. If you can, work a couple of H2 tags into your page and get the keyword

phrase you’ve assigned to that page within the header tag.

          You want to ensure that the keyword you have assigned to a specific page appears

as close to the beginning of that page as possible, and certainly within the first 200 characters. The higher up on a page, the greater the keyword prominence. Search engines tend to lend more weight to page content above the fold. The fold is where your browser window ends and where vertical scrolling begins, if necessary.

           The assigned keyword should appear at the beginning of the text on the page, in the middle, and again at the end. You want to build a theme on your page, and to do so you have to spread your keywords throughout the page, not just focus on the first paragraph.

           Always have a descriptive paragraph at the top of your Web page that describes what can be found on the page for your target market and for the major search engines. Search engines use this as their source for a site description and keywords on your site. In addition, search engines use the content found within the opening paragraph in influencing the ranking of your site among search results. Again, be sure to use the most important keywords first, preferably within the first two or three sentences. This is enormously important. Make sure that the keywords you use flow naturally within the content of the opening paragraph and relate to the content and purpose of your site. You don’t want

the search engines to think you’re trying to cram in words where they don’t fit.

          As you can tell, textual HTML content is extremely important to the search engines, which brings me to my next point. Never create a page with excessive graphics as content. For example, don’t display information as a graphic file that should be displayed in text. I’ve seen this done numerous times. A site may have the best opening statement in the world, but the search engines can’t use it because the information is presented in the form of a graphic. No matter how great it looks,