The Basics of Search Engine Results

How is your website performing with the search engines? Do your pages include the content and other elements that enable search engines to recognize your website as being a match to what a person has typed into the web search box? Are there any elements within your website that would cause the search engines to omit your page from the search results? Does the type of page coding, meta-tags and existing content put your website among those being listed as relevant to search results? Is anything being done to enhance your site's rankings among all the other websites in the search results?

The purpose of Search Engine Optimization is to:
make sure no search engine rules are being violated

provide relevant meta-tags with matching content in quantity and quality

maximize the marketing effectiveness of each main page in the site
use existing intrasite links to the best advantage for site rankings
advise and/or implement quality site links on other websites.

• Understanding Search Engines

Search engine indexing programs, sometimes called 'spiders' or 'bots', have gotten a lot smarter than they used to be. The old tricks for being indexed on search results no longer work. In fact, there are many web design practices that seem like tricks to a search engine spider and cause your site to actually be eliminated from indexing! Search engines are looking for websites that are what they say they are and have the content and links to prove it. They determine who is genuine by comparing the page content and links to information coded in the page meta-tags. There are many types of meta-tags, but most of them won't impact your search engine success at all. The most important meta-tags are the ones for the page title, the page description and keywords.

Each page in your website should have a title that is verified within the page content as being appropriate and genuine. The same is true for page descriptions. Remember, it isn't just your home page than should be available for display on search results. Every important page is a candidate for search engine indexing. The tools that make a web page index-ready are strong definitive page titles and descriptions coded in the meta-tags. Next in importance are the keyword meta-tags.

Think of keywords as being the categories in a business directory in which you would want your business to be listed. As an example, pretend you own a health club. Since most people looking for a health club would go to the "health club" section of the phone business directory, that is where you would logically place your listing. But if a person is actually seeking a schedule of exercise classes (rather than a place for body building), they would probably go to the phone listing category of "exercise classes." If your business isn't listed under "exercise classes," as well as "health clubs," they wouldn't find you. They also would not find you if they looked up "body building," "pilates," or "yoga."

Of course, people searching on the internet don't turn to pages within categories, they type in keywords that describe exactly what they are hoping to find. If you are the health club owner and you want to be displayed in search results for your variety of business offerings, you need to have a keyword meta-tag that includes the terms "health club," "exercise classes," "body building," "pilates," and "yoga." But, that's not all! The terms need to also appear in the content of the page multiple times so that the search engine spider will see that the page is genuiniely about health clubs, exercise classes, etc. The content needs to be as close to the top of the page as possible so the spider can see it quickly. (They only read the top portion of the page and if the keyword matching content isn't there, they give up and go crawling someplace else.)

With the correct kind of meta-tags, web compliant design and avoidance of what the web crawlers will think is spam your site will be indexed. The question is, on which page of the search results will you be listed? After all, there are literally thousands of health clubs that have websites in the search engine's index. If your website listing does not appear on the first few pages of a search result, it probably won't be seen.

So, the next step is to find ways to narrow down the search results. Your business name will definitely help, if the web searcher knows what it is and it should always be included in your meta-tags and content. But, if someone is looking for health clubs in general, it won't be of any value to you for someone in Texas to see your health club listing if your business is in Georgia. Meta-tags and content should at least include the name of the town and state. For web searchers who know your street name and city but can't remember the name of your business, you should go ahead and include your full address. Names of people who work at your company and any other unique information which will narrow the number of competing health clubs and push your listing closer to the top should be included in your meta-tags and content.

And then there are the 'rankings.' The more popular your website is, the higher it will be ranked in the search results. A good example of this is on the YouTube site. The videos that are viewed the most are the ones that have the highest rankings and are featured the most - which are the ones that are viewed the most. (Do you see a vicious cycle forming here?) Website popularity is determined by hit count, the number of links from other sites to your site and the ranking of the sites that have links to your site. That is why it is important to have your site address listed on other highly visited sites, including popular directories, article sites and social networking sites. It isn't only a matter of having people click thru to your site - The 'vicious cycle' begins by having your site links in as many places as you can. That raises your rankings, which makes your site display higher in search results which gets your site more hits which raises your rankings and the cycle goes on...

Is this already more than you want to have to think about? Well, that's why you want to make the most of your website investment by having a professional Search Engine Optimization.

A smart first step is to have your website audited for current search engine compliance and to see if what you already have can be tuned up to give you improved search results. Learn more...

Have questions?

Feel free to contact me:
denese.sproul@gmail.com