Better web placement (SEO) tips

Many people ask me how they can increase their website's placement on the internet. Since I get this question a lot, I thought I'd offer some tips!

1. Content. Web crawlers love lots of content! When they scan your website, they can, in a sense, read about your website through your text. The more text you have that is relevant to your website, the higher a search engine will rate you. Spiders read web pages top to bottom and they put more weight to the words appearing in the first few sentences. Thus, a few well crafted sentences can make it easier for search engines to locate your page.

2. Keywords. Though not all search engines care about keywords, some do. If you don't know what keywords are, go to your website, at the top of your site click on view > view source. If you have Internet Explorer 7, click on the Page icon on the top right hand side, then go to view source. This will open a window with all of your website's code. Near the top you should see something like this: meta name="keywords" content="blah, blah". In the "blah, blah" section, you want about 20 keywords that describe your site. Words you think someone would type into a web browser to find your type of site. If you don't see "meta" information at the top of your site code, ask your web master to add it.

3. Content AND Keywords. Now you have lots of content, and you have some keywords. But you really need to have your keywords in your content. Unless you consider yourself to be a very skilled writer, it’s probably worth your while to invest in the skills of a good copywriter who understands the concept of “search engine optimization.” The money you’ll spend will likely be rewarded with much higher traffic on your site.

4. Description Tag. Like your keywords, the description is sometimes used by search engines to describe your web site. This goes for every page of your website. For example, here is my description on my home page: meta name="description" content="Sarah Powers Media in Panama City Florida provides: video production, wedding videos, event videos, videographer, 2d and 3d graphic design, website design and development and much more."

5. Title tag. This is extremely important. Search engines read these and assume that what text is in your title tag, must be directly relevant to your page. Have your most important keywords in your title tag if you can.

6. Bold Content. All of those important keywords we’re talking about...make sure to bold them, underline them, and italicize them anytime you can. Remember though, keep your site looking good.

7. Graphics. Describe them. When you place a graphic or photo on your site, you can add what is called an "alt" tag. This is where you can place information about your graphic. This gives more content for web crawlers to read. It never hurts to have a keyword or two in there. Here is an example from my site: img src="images/graphics.jpg" alt="graphic art design" I have a graphic on my site, well the graphic is just the hand drawn word "graphics." But since a web crawler can not read my jpg word "graphics" I told the crawler it was "graphic art design."

8. Links. If you link to other quality websites your ratings to up. Mind you, the key word is quality.

9. Update. Search engines know when you last updated your site. If you update your site on a regular basis and even freshen up your content or add new content, your ratings will go up.

10. Submission. Once you are finished, you can submit to the search engines, such as Google, MSN, and Yahoo! for instance. This will not make your ratings go up, but they may visit your site and index it quicker.

Please note, there are TONS of theories on how to get great web placement. There are also many recommendations. I listed just a few tips that I have come across along the way that can help you get going. Enjoy!