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To get the best search engine visibility, should follow the next Five Basic Rules which state that a web site should be:

• Easy to read
• Easy to navigate
• Easy to find
• Consistent in layout and design
• Quick to download

By following these rules, we’re building a website to satisfy the targeted visitors.

The successful Search Engine Optimization program consists of three components which are the form of an effective e-marketing program:

• Text component
• Link component
• Popularity component

Web pages that contain the words that the targeted visitors are typing into search queries generally have greater search engine visibility than pages that contain little or no keywords.

The way web pages are linked to each other also affects the site’s search engine visibility. If search engine spiders can find the pages quickly and easily, then the website has a much better chance of appearing at the top of search results.

If two websites have the same text component and link component “weights,” the site that end users click the most will usually rank higher and sometimes, a popular website will consistently rank higher than sites that use plenty of keywords.

So, building a website that appeal to both directory editors and the targeted visitors is very important for maximum search engine visibility.

Details for building each component

When a search engine spider analyzes a web page, it determines keyword relevancy based on an algorithm, which is a formula that calculates how web pages are ranked.

The most important text for a search engine is the most important text for the targeted visitors which are the texts that targeted visitors are going to read when they arrive at the website.

To understand it well, the most important text on a web page, the text should satisfy the following requirements:

· The text must be visible on a standard web browser without your targeted visitors performing some type of action.

· You must be able to copy and paste the text directly from the web browser to a text editor (such as Notepad).

The two most important places to put keywords are in the title tag and in the visible-body text.

Title-tag text and visible-body text are considered primary text by the search engines because all the search engines index this text and place significant weight on it.

Meta-tag text and alternative text are considered secondary text by the search engines because not all search engines read and record this text.

Keyword Selection

The effective e-marketing campaign is selecting the best keywords that your potential customers use to find your site. Selecting the right keywords requires research.

Pretend that someone has never heard of the business but is looking for the type of product or service.

· Remember that you must determine the keywords that company’s potential customers would type in a search box, not the words that you would type in a search box.

· Review the company’s printed materials. What words are used over and over? Remove all words used for sales and marketing hype from the printed materials. Many of the remaining words are possible keywords.

· When you speak to new and current customers on the phone, what questions do they ask and what words do they use? Do they mention a specific product or service? Do they ask for a specific department? Ask your current customers how they would find you on the web. You might discover that your current customers use terms that you haven’t even thought of. Consider including these unexpected terms in your keyword list.

· When you prepare a potential list of keywords, you must determine the various word combinations the targeted visitors are most likely to type to a search query.

· Singular and plural versions of the most important keywords, synonyms, misspellings, acronyms, and abbreviations (with and without periods) are all potential keywords.

· When you create the keyword list, think up as many combinations as possible. When people are searching for something specific, they tend to use more than one word.

· It is usually better to target longer keyword phrases because the people who type specific keyword phrases are more likely to be converted into customers. Three-, four-, or five-word keyword phrases often provide more accurate results in the search engines.

When you begin to analyze your keyword list, you are looking for trends. Whenever I prepare a keyword list, I always put the list into a spreadsheet. A spreadsheet can help you see the trends more quickly and easily.

The first set of data is the initial keyword list. After you have this keyword list, you need to determine which keyword combinations that targeted visitors is most likely to type in search engine queries. Questions you need to ask yourself include the following:

· Did people tend to use the singular or plural version of a word?

· What three or four words appeared together most often?

· What was the word order?

Misspelled Words

Many search engine marketers recommend using misspelled words as part of a keyword list. Sometimes this is a good keyword strategy and sometimes it is not a good strategy. It depends on the word(s) you are targeting.

Because this word does not appear to be a popular search, I wouldn’t be overly concerned with the misspelling.

Put the misspelling in the Meta keywords tag.

Remember that for the search engines to consider a word important, you must use that word in your primary text which are the title tag and the visible-body text.

Writing Effective Title Tags

A title tag has a specific meaning when it comes to web site design and the search engines. A title tag is the text placed inside the <> and < / title > tags.

The title tag is very important in terms of search engine visibility because it serves multiple functions:

· Title-tag text is considered primary text by all the search engines, meaning that all the search engines record this text and place a considerable value on it.

· Title-tag text is the first text shown in search results. The text is highlighted in the search results as a hyperlink to the website. This hyperlink is the call to action—it’s letting the targeted visitors know that there is a link to information pertaining to the words they entered in a search query.

· Title-tag text is the text shown in Bookmarks and Favorites.

- The first function of the title Tag is for search engine visibility. All the search engines consider title-tag text when calculating relevancy.

- The second title-tag function is a call to action.

- The title-tag content should encourage the targeted visitors to click the link to your site.

General Rules

Write a unique, descriptive title of 5 to 10 words for each page—or 69 to 75 characters. Remove as many filler words as possible from the title. Titles should contain your most important keywords and phrases and accurately reflect the content of your web pages.

All title-tag text should be unique because every page of your web site contains unique content. Does the About Us page contain the same information as the Products pages? Probably not, and the title tags need to reflect the differences in page content.

Unless the company name is well known and has excellent branding, it is best not to place the company name in the title tag. To get or maintain branding and to modify the website to accommodate the targeted visitors, do not put the company name in the beginning of the title tag unless you have a keyword in the company name.

Some search engine marketers change an official company name to artificially inflate the keyword density inside the title tag. They might separate words that are normally put together.

Power Combination Strategy

Whenever possible, the first three words in the title tag should consist of words that, when typed in any combination in a search query, can be a keyword phrase.

Singular and Plural Strategy

Using both the singular and plural version of a keyword can be a good title-tag strategy.

Keep a list of various titles so when it comes time to resubmit a page to a search engine or to build another web page targeting the same keywords, you have a database of effective title-tag text. Sometimes, search engines show a preference for short title tags. Sometimes, they show a preference for longer ones. Test every single title and measure the audience’s responses to those titles. Use the titles and keywords that get the best response, and rewrite other web page titles based on the testing results.

Body Text

The visible-body text which is between the <> and < / body > tags that you can copy and paste directly from a web browser to a text editor.

One aspect about the search engine spiders does not change: They always index title tags and body text. For this reason, it is extremely important to place keywords throughout the visible-body text in your web pages to guarantee that search engines can find and record all your relevant keywords.

Keyword Prominence

All the search engines consider the words at the top of a web page, commonly referred to as above the fold, more important than the words on the rest of the web page. How high up a keyword is on a web page is called keyword prominence.

Meta Tags

For search engine visibility, the most common uses for Meta tags are the keyword, description, and robots exclusion attributes.

Meta tags are secondary text meant to enhance your site in the search results pages.

The Meta-Tag Description Attribute

When writing meta-tag content, spend more time writing a good description than writing a keyword list. The description is far more important than the keywords list.

Some major search engines use meta-tag descriptions when displaying the results of a search query. So, the meta-tag description must accomplish two aims:

· Help obtain a good search engine ranking in the search engines that use the meta-tag description for relevancy

· Draw out a call to action, such as encouraging people to click the link to your web site

When writing your Meta tag descriptions, select the most important four to five keywords per page based on your keyword research. Write careful 200-to-250-character sentences and phrases, targeting the most important words contained on your web pages. When you are writing Meta tag descriptions, try to eliminate as many filler words as you can to make room for the keywords.

· If you use words in the Meta tag description that you do not use on the web pages, most of the search engines consider it spam.

General guidelines to writing Meta tag descriptions include the following:

· Do not repeat the exact title-tag content in the Meta tag description. This sets off a red flag to the search engine spiders that you are keyword stacking.

· The most important keyword phrases should be placed at the beginning of the Meta tag description.

· Use the singular and plural version of the most important keywords, when applicable.

· Try not to separate important keyword phrases.

· Although the search engines do not give specific guidelines for keyword repetition, try to keep repetition to a minimum. I generally stop at three to four repetitions. Too much repetition sets off a red flag to the search engines that you are keyword stacking.

· Some search engines treat different words, such as the singular and plural version, as the same word. When writing your Meta tag descriptions, be aware of this.

· If you are going to repeat words, try not to put them right next to each other. Separate them with other words.

· You should be encouraging your targeted visitors to click the link to the website. Ask your targeted visitors to read more about or learn more about the targeted keywords.

· Placing a list of keywords in the Meta tag description is not an effective way of encouraging the targeted visitors to click the links to your site. It also sets off a red flag to the search engine spiders for potential spam (keyword stuffing).

· Whenever possible, make sure that Meta tag contains sentences or long phrases.

Using a Company Name in a Meta-Tag Description

Just as with the title tag, unless an official company name contains a keyword, either do not use it in a Meta tag description or move it to the end of the description.

The Meta-Tag Keywords Attribute

When selecting words to place in the Meta tag keywords attribute, it is best to select keywords that you actually use on the content of the web page. If a word appears in the Meta tags that does not appear in your main body content, your web page very likely can receive a spam penalty from the search engines.

When selecting keywords and keyword phrases for the Meta tag keywords attribute, consider the following variations:

· Singular versus plural.

When creating the keywords list, place the version of the keyword that the site visitors use the most at the beginning of the keyword list.

· Uppercase versus lowercase.

Most search engines do not use case sensitivity as an element of their algorithms. So, using all versions (all uppercase, all lowercase, or all initial capitalization) of keywords and keyword phrases is probably a waste of time and can result in a spam penalty for keyword stacking.

Consider this as well: When people type words and phrases in a search engine query, they tend to type words very quickly. The quickest way to type words is not to use any capitalization.

· Commas versus no commas.

It makes no difference to the search engines that use the Meta tag keywords attribute whether you use commas or spaces to separate your keywords and keyword phrases. If it is easier for you to view your keyword phrases with commas, use them. Using commas does not affect the web page’s relevancy.

· Misspelled keywords.

Because some keywords (such as the word “millennium”) are commonly misspelled, you might want to put a misspelled keyword in your meta-keywords tag. However, if that misspelled word does not appear in your main body text, this strategy is generally a waste of time.

Search engines use both keyword frequency and keyword placement in their algorithms. If you are putting a misspelled keyword in only one place, it’s not helping your web page’s relevancy because the keyword density for that one word is practically non-existent.

The Meta-Revisit Tag

The meta-revisit tag supposedly instructs a search engine spider to revisit a web page within a specified period of time.

< name="revisit-after" content="14 days"> 

The Meta-Robots Tag

If you don’t want search engine spiders to index the content of a specific web page then use the Meta tag robots exclusion attribute.

Alternative Text

Alternative text is the text that is placed inside graphic images in HTML code. Alternative text tells the browser if image is not downloaded then show this text instead of it.

Transparent Images

Many web designers use a transparent 1×1-pixel transparent image, commonly called a blank.gif or a spacer.gif, to get elements on a web page to line up correctly. Because of current browser incompatibilities, there still is a need to use these types of images.

However, according to the search engines, when you place alternative text inside a graphic image, that text must be relevant to the actual graphic image, and to the web page on which the image is placed. Hiding keywords or links inside a graphic image is considered spam.

If you must use transparent images on the web pages, do not place any alternative text in the graphic image. You can also place just a punctuation mark (such as an asterisk) as the alternative text. Search engines do not read punctuation marks.

Link Component

Site architecture refers to a web site’s navigation scheme, individual page layout, and how directories are set up on your web server.

Site architecture is very important because the search engine spiders must be able to find and record the keyword-rich text on the web pages. So, the way pages are linked to each other, and the way website is linked to other websites, has a major impact on the site’s search engine visibility. Without effective site architecture, website marketers must pay for search engine visibility through paid inclusion or pay-per-click programs.

Navigation Schemes

Navigation schemes should enable visitors to find what they are searching for as quickly and as easily as possible.

Many websites use multiple navigation schemes.

Common navigation schemes include the following:

· Hypertext links

· Navigation buttons

· Image maps

· Drop-down/pull-down menus

· Animation/Flash buttons

· Dynamically generated URLs, such as those generated by a site search

All search engine spiders love text links because they can record the text in and around the link and follow these links from web page to web page.

Many search engines consider anchor text relevant because webmasters generally link to pages that contain information in which their targeted visitors are interested. So, anchor text is important.

Targeted visitors automatically understand that a blue, underlined word (or just an underlined word) indicates an unvisited link and that a purple or faded color indicates a visited link.

We recommend breadcrumb links. Breadcrumbs are text link schematics on every web page that let people know where they are and where they have been. Breadcrumbs are commonly used at the top of a web page and are hierarchical in nature.

Because breadcrumbs are generally placed at the top of web pages, search engines consider the text placed inside the breadcrumb links important.

Popularity Component

Websites that more users find useful are more relevant to a particular search.

If two websites have similar text and spider-friendly link architectures, the site with greater popularity consistently ranks higher over time because of the following reasons:

· Credible web sites usually link to pages with valuable information.

· A site’s end users tend to use the same web site over and over again because the information is relevant.

So, building a site that appeal to both directory editors and your target audience is very important for getting and maintaining maximum search engine visibility.

Link Popularity

The link popularity of a web page is the number and quality of links pointing to that web page. Link popularity is not as simple as obtaining as many links as possible to a web page. The quality of the sites linking to a web page holds far more weight than the quantity of sites.

Compromising Between Marketing and Design

Some of the most beautiful web pages are created entirely in Flash or with graphic images to preserve the aesthetics of the colors, uncommon typefaces, and movement. These web pages, by virtue of effective offline and online advertising campaigns, get plenty of traffic and sales conversions.

To make pages like these more search engine friendly, we might recommend that visible HTML text be added to the pages. We might recommend placing text links at the bottom of the screen or using a series of breadcrumb links at the top of the screen. We might recommend placing a 250-word paragraph on each page.

Web sites should be constructed primarily for the targeted visitors. Customers are the ones who purchase the products and services, not the search engines. So, if the targeted visitors prefer a Flash site and the other marketing efforts are providing effective sales leads and conversions, a pay-for-placement search engine strategy is the best solution.