Validation and Promotion

Schedule

Intro

Topic:

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Project Guidelines

Finding the Right Words

If people are trying to find your site, what words will they type in the search box that will lead them to your page? Perhaps it seems obvious to you. However, you only approach your subject from one point of view. What words would someone else use?

Try using a search engine to find other web sites about your topic. Look at those sites and see what keywords they use that put them at the top of the listing. Do not—I repeat, do not—simply copy the keywords from another site. Recently there have been accusations of fraud and legal prosecution against people who "hijacked" web surfers by duplicating the keywords from a legitimate site as a way to lure them to another site. However, it is legitimate to look at other sites to refresh your vocabulary about the topic and get ideas of keywords to add.

Ask friends, family and people who might be interested in your topic what words they would use when looking for information about your topic. Think of all the variations. For example, if your topic is "African-American artists" you will want to remember that some people might search for "Black artists."

Once you have a list of two or three dozen words, plan to use all of them in your "keywords" <meta> tags. However, choose three as the most important.

Word Usage

Make sure to use your keywords, especially the three most important ones, in your page titles, "alt" tags for images, headers, and text.

Many search engines display the title of web pages in search results, so try making a list of all the web page titles at your site. How does your list of titles read?

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Unit 14