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Do You Know Where Your Web Site Is? 8/31/00 It's the new economy. Do you know where your Web site is? Does anybody else? The answer to this question is crucial to the success of any online presence. Web site promotion through search engine placement is free online marketing for your business. If you're not in the top 20 to 30 spots when a person performs a search, you are losing over 90% of your potential search engine referral hits. This information will not only help you gain hits, but "targeted hits". This makes for much more qualified visitation to your site, reserving your bandwidth for those who will bring you profit. Keywords Are Key: Keywords consist of single words of phrases that you tailor your site to reflect. They are extremely important because these are the words and phrases that people type into a search engine to find what they are looking for. Choosing the right keywords is the first step to search engine optimization. Choose keywords that are customized to your needs. If you have a web site for a real estate company who does business primarily in New Hampshire, use "new hampshire real estate" as your keyword phrase instead of "real estate". You have a much greater chance of top placement and your visitors are much more qualified. I used this exact keyword example just last week to get number one placement on Yahoo for one of my clients. Wouldn't it be nice to know which keywords are the most popular before you choose them? You can. This is an amazing free tool. Read the instructions below before you visit this site. GoTo.com Inventory Search: Search Tips This is the ultimate spy tool. This URL takes you to the GoTo.com Tools & Tips" area. Once there, you'll find a link called "Search Term Suggestion List." Click on it and, after a new window opens, enter any term that you wish to research. You will be shown how many searches were done for that and similar terms for the last month. Similar terms are typically those that include your actual search term as a portion. Using Keywords Successfully: It's always a good idea to have your company name as a keyword, especially if it is in your domain name. This will help even more if a search engine or directory editor examines your site. Keyword Use: Once you know what keywords you will implement, determine how often they will be used. A good rule of thumb is to not repeat keywords more than 7 times throughout a single page. Overuse of a keyword is considered spamming and can destroy your hopes of high placement or, in some cases, any placement at all. Keyword Prominence: As important as how often you use a keyword is where it appears in the text. Try to place over 50% (55% to 75% is ideal) of your keyword usage in the first few lines of the body text. This is tricky, but well worth the effort. If, for example, you used "New Hampshire real estate" as a keyword phrase seven times throughout the page, try to break it down like this: 4 mentions in the first 2 paragraphs - 2 mentions in the next paragraph or two - 1 mention in a paragraph toward the bottom of the page. Keyword Weight: Your keyword weight can be important to good placement and very easy to figure out. Simply count each occurrence of the keyword and compare it to the total number of words on the page. Each keyword or keyword phrase should represent somewhere between 3 and 10% of the total number of words on that page. Rank Higher: Most search engines are different in the way they rank any web site, however there is one common thread. Most search engines (not directories) rank by relevance. They use an algorithm (method for establishing search criteria) that is specific to that particular engine's wants and needs. These algorithms change every so often and you never know when it will happen. The reason that each search engine works differently from each other is simple. They are in competition for hits, just like you. They make money from selling advertising on their web site, just as you may decide to do when you get enough visitors. Being unique from the competition is critical to their success. Now that we have an understanding of keyword selection and placement in the body of the document, let's take a look at the little bonuses we can get for strategic use of tags. Background Information is simply that data that the user typically does not see as part of the body of the text. We can place keywords in the background to enhance our placement. This is accomplished through the use of tags. The three tags that we are concerned with right now are the "Title" tag, "Alt" tag and "Description" tag. These are also considered Meta Tags, in case you're familiar with the term. The Title tag is just as it implies - the title of the Web page. Choose a title that is very descriptive and concise. Most search engines only recognize the first 6 words of the title so try not to go over 8 words total. Another very important thing is to have your primary keyword in the title. Many search engines will penalize you for having more than one instance of the same keyword in a title, so bear this in mind. Here's the clincher. This tip alone can get you placement that's 20% higher than present. Make your title keyword as prominent (near the beginning) as possible. The Alt tag is a simple Meta insert that tells the Web browser there is "alternate" information to be found in this area. A very good example is placing a message (with a keyword) behind an image. So instead of the browser reading the word "home-photo.jpg", which probably means nothing, it can read "Portsmouth New Hampshire home" and give you more credit for keywords and thus, higher placement. However, be warned. Most search engines don't like to see too many keywords in "Alt" tags so try to limit it to between 2 and 4 occurrences. The last tag of our focus is the "Description". This is very important because the description is typically what directories judge you by and what your visitor will see of your site before actually visiting it. This is your one shot at convincing somebody that your site is better than the other 27,554 matches that came up, and you only have about 25 words (or 150 characters) in which to do it. Keyword Prominence is again, a great concern here. Try to place your primary keyword as close the beginning of your description as possible. In Closing: I hope you benefit from these tips as so many others have. I have benefited from information in previous editions of this publication and hope to be of service to you. ================================================================= Bio: Mike Small is the co-founder and content administrator of DotComPirates.com - a free online resource loaded with Web site promotion and search engine placement tips. His personal email address is: mike@dotcompirates.com