How To Get More Out Of Search Engine Traffic

When you have completed this article by HookMedia's Charity Stoner, you will know:
* The difference between search engines and directories.
* How to use keywords to increase your company's search-engine prominence.
* How to select the strongest, most appropriate keywords.

The number one way people find a new Web site is by using a search engine, yet few companies even know where their site ranks in the search listings. Managing your company's search-engine prominence is one of the best and cheapest ways to generate targeted traffic to your site.

The term "search engine" often is applied to all the search utilities on the Internet. However, there is a big difference between the two types of search utilities: Search engines (such as AltaVista, Lycos and Excite) and directories (including Yahoo, Snap and LookSmart).

Search engines have an automated process of finding and indexing Web sites. The search engine "spider" indexes every site submitted in its "Add Your URL" box and every linked page on that site. The spider continues following, or spidering, links and indexing the pages that it finds. Your page then is listed by "relevancy" to the keyword term entered by the user.

By contrast, directories use people called editors to view and judge your Web site. The editor takes a look at your page and decides whether it should be added to the database. A directory requires your page title, URL, description and a category within the directory that fits your page content. Your page then is listed in alphabetical order under the directory category.

All search utilities are migrating to a mixture of both search engine and directory, but they mainly specialize in one or the other. For example, Yahoo! primarily is a directory that also uses the Inktomi search engine. Many techniques in this article are focused on improving your site's rankings within search engines. However, as you get listed in directories, the same techniques should improve your rankings within their indexes.

Before improving your site's search engine rankings, it's important to understand how search engines determine site relevance. Search engines use their own complex algorithms to rank Web sites, and no two search engines will rank the same Web page in the same way. One of the most important algorithms is for scoring the "keyword density" or how often the user's keyword appears on your site. The site with the highest keyword density in the correct places wins.

When a search engine checks for keyword density, it rates a site using a number of different criteria. However, they all look for one thing-Text. However, this isn't just text that appears visible to a Web surfer; it also includes text in various Meta data such as site descriptions and keyword tags.

Each search engine is different, but the usual order of importance for determining text relevance is:
1. Body text.
2. Headers.
3. Title.
4. URL.
5. Text in text link.
6. Description.
7. Alt tags.
8. Keywords tag.

Thus, the most important text on any site is the actual body text on the page. Search engines consider this text the most important overall because that is what the user will see.

This poses a serious problem to many sites that are trying to control the way a page looks by imbedding text within image (.GIF) files.

Search engines cannot see images and cannot follow image maps to spider your site. They can read Alt tags, so be sure every image on your site has one. Engines also read text links and it is good practice to place text links to all of your most important pages at the bottom of every page. This also helps your users navigate your site.

Search engines cannot read:
1. Images.
2. Image maps.
3. Frames.
4. Dynamic URLs.

While there is no secret to jump starting your rank, placing Meta tags on your site will help it achieve higher rankings through increased keyword density and relevancy ratings. It also can help attract people to your site with a detailed title and description.

Well-written Meta tags will make your search engine listing more attractive to potential customers and may help you increase your site's ranking on some keywords. If you pick the right keywords and get a high ranking on those keywords you could see 100- to 1,000 new visitors per month coming to your site.

There are five steps to writing effective Meta tags:
1. Picking the perfect 10 keyword phrases.
2. Writing an eye-catching title.
3. Writing a traffic snagging description.
4. Writing a keyword dense (but not too dense) keywords tag.
5. Submitting to the search engines.

Picking The Perfect 10 Keywords

Focusing on the best keywords prevents watering down your keyword density. Write down every keyword phrase you can find on your site. Think like a search engine user: What would you type into a search engine to find yourself or someone else in your business? Take a look at your competitor's keywords (in your browser go to "View" and then "Source") to see if they have any techniques you should consider.

Take a look at your list. Cross out anything that is only one word. There are several reasons why you only want to use two and three word phrases and not one word.
1. One word is too broad to really generate traffic. For example, if you sell paper towels and you type in the keyword "paper" into a search engine, you could get paper mills, toilet paper, newspaper, company white papers, research papers. . . I think you get the idea.
2. Usually, one word keywords are the most sought after keywords, so the competition is very high to get that ranking.
3. If you use the keyword phrase "paper towel," the search engine sees it as paper towel, and paper, and towel so you are getting three keywords for the price of one.

Then see what people are actually searching for. Go to www.goto.com. Click on "Managing your account," then on "Advertiser Tips and Tricks," and then the "Search term suggestion list." Take your new list of keywords and try typing in one. This helpful tool will tell you how often users on GoTo.com typed in that term last month, plus what other keywords they added to it. So if you type in "paper towels" it will tell you how many people searched for "paper towels" and "Brawny paper towels" and "Bounty paper towels" and "paper towel holders." Start a spreadsheet with the keywords that match your site and how often people actually searched for them. Then, pick your top 10 keyword phrases, making sure they match your site and describe your business. Rank them in order of importance, from one to 10.

Writing An Eye-Catching Title

Get out a piece of paper and a pencil. On the first five lines write your best keyword from your top 10 keyword list. Using the keyword phrase on line one, write a short sentence about your company. Start simple and write the first thing that comes to mind. Then with each line write another sentence starting with the same keyword phrase. If you need to, you can add one word before the keyword.

For example:
1. Paper towels from Angel Towels keep your home clean.
2. Paper towels are the best at Angel Towels.
3. Our paper towels are the most absorbent - Angel Towels.
4. Paper towels that can save you from crying over spilled milk! Angel Towels
5. Absorbent paper towels keep your messes under control - Angel Towels

The most important thing, as you may have noticed, is that your number one keyword be the very first word in your title. Search engines consider the first words of your title the most relevant and so do your potential customers. If a person types "paper towels" into the search engine, they expect to see their keyword again. Even if you are not number one, you may get a click when ranks 1 through 5 have no mention of paper towels in their titles.

Make sure the title you use is less than 70 characters, since most search engines only will display about 70 characters. Also, bonus points if you can get another keyword phrase into your title while still keeping it under 70 characters!

Writing A Traffic-Snagging Description

Once you have searchers looking at your title, you need to hook them and make them click on the description. However, we still need to think about the search engine.

Let's try another exercise. On a clean sheet of paper, write your top 10 keywords in two columns, top five on the left and the rest on the right. Using three to five keywords, write a two sentence description of your Web site. Write a few more using different words. Try to keep your number one keyword as close to the beginning of the description as possible.

For example:
Paper towels are an essential staple for any home and for your family's big messes you need the absorbent material that Angel Towels are made of. Buy a 5 pack of Angel Towels online today and get a free paper towel dispenser!

Your final description needs to be less than 250 characters. Some search engines only show 170-200 characters of the description in their listings, so keep that in mind too.

Writing A Keyword Tag

Last but not least is the keyword tag. This one is easy! Take your top 10 keyword phrases and put them in order from 1 to 10 with commas and spaces in appropriate places. Then copy and paste that list right behind it so that you have:
keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3, keyword 4, keyword 5, keyword 6, keyword 7, keyword 8, keyword 9, keyword 10, keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3, keyword 4, keyword 5, keyword 6, keyword 7, keyword 8, keyword 9, keyword 10.

You're done! If you have a few more keywords that you would like to add, go ahead and enter them after this list. Double check your keywords tag is less than 800 characters and that no word is listed more than seven times (search engines will penalize you for keyword stuffing; most people consider seven a safe number).

Now, let's put it all in HTML format so you can place it on your Web page. The Meta tag should go directly after the tag and before any Java script. The code looks like this:

Once this block of code is filled in with your information and placed on your site, you are ready to submit to the search engines.

Barriers To Achieving A Top 10 Ranking

If your site is all images, uses frames or has a dynamic URL (places special characters in the URL like "?," "%," "&") then placing Meta tags on your site probably won't help very much. It would be a good idea to put them on anyway, but do not expect a Top 50 ranking.

Redesigning your site to add more text or get rid of frames certainly will help. If your site cannot be redesigned you may want to consider creating special "doorway" pages that are specifically aimed at getting a high ranking on search engines.

Some dynamic URLs will not be correctly indexed by search engines. To see if your URL will be picked up, delete anything after the first special character. If you still can get to the page with this truncated URL, you are fine. If not, see if you can get your Webmaster to fix it so that is does go directly to the right page.

Successful search engine placement requires constant adjustment. If at first you don't succeed; tweak, tweak, tweak! Try some different keywords, or take a look at some other Web site's Meta tags and see what it is doing differently. Search engines change on nearly a daily basis so your listings may rise one day only to drop the next.

At HookMedia, we watch our client's rankings on a weekly basis and re-submit when necessary. If re-submitting does not improve the ranking, then we re-optimize the Meta tags.