Advice on Search Engine Positioning

I'm happy to report that you don't need "tricks" to get traffic from the search engines. They can bring you highly targeted, motivated visitors. Your search engine success doesn't require you to sell your soul to the devil and join the email spammer in the gutter. Instead of focusing on search engine tricks, try and understand what the engines are trying to achieve and then work with them - not against them.

Search engines use a variety of techniques to sort sites and match relevancy to search terms. The formula used by any one search engine varies over time. They change because they strive to improve the relevancy of search results. They must close any vulnerabilities to abuse and provide a better service than their competitors. Your success depends on more than one search engine. Repeat that again because it is important - Your success depends on more than one search engine. The implication is it is ridiculous to play the search engine "game". Life is too short! Playing games isn't really necessary - work with the search engine services and forget trying to trick them into a great search position. ( Any success you have with a hip trick will eventually disappear when the engine closes the hole - and what works for one engine might not work for another. You've got alot of work ahead of you if you start playing the game ).

How do you work with the search engines? Easy! Your generous friends the search engines just want to provide searchers relevant results. Help them to do their job. Because they use a variety of techniques, cover your bases and give them pages they can accurately include in search results. Doing so isn't hard. Here's some advice:

Use a title tag that accurately reflects the page content. Choose a title that arouses a spark of interest you know the page can answer. Capitalize the first letter of each word so the title has more visual interest.

Putting <title> Bla Bla Bla </title> directly after the <head> tag provides a title to the browser window - where nobody ever notices it! On the other hand, many search engines use it in their results listings where it it is extremely important. Note that many directory-type search engines alphabetically list the sites they think are relevant. I named this page "Advice on Search Engine Positioning" very intentionally to reflect content, visual interest, alphabetical indexing, and not exceeding 36 characters including spaces. Engines don't seem to like really long titles and can cut you off in mid sentence.

Use meta tags for keywords. Many search engines rely heavily on these to match pages to queries. Others ignore them! You should always include them.

For this page the keywords are: <meta name="keywords" content="SEARCH ENGINE POSITIONING, SEARCH ENGINES, SEARCH ENGINE TECHNIQUES, SEARCH ENGINE TIPS, META TAGS, CHOOSING KEYWORDS, TITLE TAG, DESCRIPTION TAG"> Those keywords were chosen for relevancy to the page content. I had to think like someone entering a query into a search engine. ( Nobody types in "pics" - they almost always type in a combination of words like "hot pics" ). Your keywords should be words used in the page. Don't be tempted to throw in unrelated but commonly searched words like "naked" etc. Doing so only corrupts the relevance of search results - the visitors who are tricked into visiting your site won't appreciate your techniques. They won't stick around long enough to find out what your site is really about. If the search engines catch you they will remove your site from their database.

Don't repeat the the keywords in your meta tag. Put your most important keywords first. Ideally your most important keyword will also be in your title and repeated in your first few paragraphs.

Use a meta tag to provide a description of your page's content that the search engines can use. Some will use them to help determine the relevance of a page to a particular search query. They may also use the description meta tag word for word in their search result listings.

If all a searcher sees is your title and description then they are your only chance to arouse interest in your site. It is in your interest that your description be truly descriptive of your page's content - within the constraint of what you can write in two or three short sentences. Working with the search engines, you can bring highly targeted visitors to your site. It is the search engines goal - and it should be yours too.

Writing good descriptions is hard. The results - namely targeted visitors - makes it all worthwhile. It is hard because at the same time as you are being "descriptive", your words must encourage the click through by being "attractive". Ultimately, you want the searchers most interested in your particular content to click through to your page. Doing this well is an art. You can do it effectively if you see the relationship between your keywords, your title, and your description. The description and title will be seen by people who have used one or more of your keywords in their search. Therefore those searchers who see your description have in effect been prescreened for you. Use your description's limited word count to reinforce what value your page has for someone who already has acknowledged an interest in at least one of your key words.

The description meta tag for this page is as follows: <meta name= "description" content="Search engine positioning can be mastered without resorting to tricks. My search engine tips get results and save time..."> I located it immediately after the key words meta tag. Note that the description is brief and that it does indeed accurately reflect this page's content. It suggests the benefit that can be achieved by visiting the page. Furthermore it includes my key words: "search engine positioning" and "search engine tips". It works with the page title to seed the idea that you can work with search engines, not against them - the theme of the page. Also note I have written the description so even if a search engine cuts it short (as they sometimes do) it will still make sense; hence, the start of the description is particularly important.

Try to write the page's first few sentences so they can function similarly to the description tag for the search engines that don't use meta tags.

Some search engines ignore your meta tag description altogether! I suppose they pessimistically believe webmasters can't be trusted to write hidden descriptions that accurately reflect the page content. If they don't display your description then they either provide none or they create their own. When they do it themselves they usually draw upon the first few sentences of your page. Consequently those sentences are particularly important. Write them so if they are used as a description, they will give an accurate indication of the page's content. ( I don't always follow this advice myself but at least I know I should ).

The first sentences of your page are important for another reason as well. Most search engines perform some form of keyword analysis on the pages they index. It helps them to furnish to the searcher a set of ranked results where those believed to be most relevant to the search query are listed first.

Always try to include some of your keywords in your first few paragraphs.

It is believed that their analysis gives extra importance to keywords found in the first few paragraphs. This reflects the tradition of having the initial paragraphs being somewhat of an introduction to the writing that follows. What this means to webpage creators like us is that we should try to include our primary keywords in the first paragraphs of our pages. There presence will give the search engines an indication that the keywords are indeed relevant to the page content. You certainly don't need to try to include every keyword in your first paragraph. Choose one or two keywords that are particularly relevant to your theme and make sure you use them. First and foremost - be natural in your writing. Don't write things like this: "the Spice Girls' Spice Girls Movie proved the Spice Girls are more that just Spice Girls - they are actresses" What was the key word I was thinking about? It is likely that the engine algorithms would actually penalize any page that uses a keyword with unnatural frequency. Don't try to trick the search engines!

Try to include some of your keywords in the last paragraph or two of your page - if possible.

Just as keyword presence is important in the first paragraph, many search engine watchers believe the last paragraphs are particularly important too. In traditional writing the last paragraphs frequently act as some form of conclusion to the preceding content. In this context it makes sense that a search engine could apply extra significance to keywords found in the last few paragraphs.

Throughout your page use your keywords where appropriate.

As a basic rule - if they are not used on your page then take them out of your key words meta tag. It is conceivable to me that if they aren't already doing it, search engines ranking algorithms are likely to penalize pages with meta tag keywords that aren't actually used in the document. On one level this seems a fair response to the keyword abuse that is rampant on the web. Where it becomes less fair is when the "rule" effectively penalizes pages that have a more graphic or multimedia focus. An example would be all those opening pages that feature little else other than a large image map graphic as a navigation system. It is of course possible to create a nice high quality html page that displays absolutely no text. Meta tags give the author the opportunity to provide search engines with information they can deal with since they can't analyze the graphic content. Such a page could be penalized by the search engines who systematically distrust webmaster's meta tags. Of course many of these problems have been created by the web design community itself. The search engines continue to be challenged by webmaster community who in large part attempt to exploit any weakness in a search engine's algorithms for their own benefit. What's a nice search engine to do? Their only option is tighten up and exercise the control they have the power to exert.

The search engine tips I provide are unlikely to upset any search engine. That's because these techniques respect the job the search engines are trying to do and endeavor to support the engines in providing highly relevant search results. These search engine positioning tips work and are likely to continue to work despite the inevitable refinement of search engine algorithms. These tips are not specific to any particular search engine - who really has time to create separate pages geared to each search engine? And furthermore who really has enough time and energy to continue to optimize those pages over time. To me such efforts depreciate our role as the primary creators of content on the internet. Creating new content is fun - unending reworking of pages for optimal search engine positioning is a real drag. I want to have a life!

My mentor, who I credit with giving me a balanced view of search engine placement, is Dr. Ken Evoy. His advice has kept me from falling into the endless trap of foolishly trying to outsmart the search engines. I have found his advice eminently practical and effective. It is relevant to any student of the web - anyone interested in how to develop a successful website: whether commercial or not.

PS - I hope you have seen my two other pages about search engines. The first is an introduction to the idea that search engines just want to be your friend. You can find that page here. The other page is about the tricks some webmasters use to manipulate or skew search results in favor of their websites. You can find that page here.

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