Slacker's Guide to HTML: Site Success Center: Generate Revenue

Some Words on Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is the practice of optimizing your website so it is the most attractive to search engines. Just like you might pile on the make-up or pour on the cologne and fix up that nasty hair of yours before you go out to the bar you should also get your website "prettied up" for the big dance.

There is a few key ways to optimize your website. Search engines all communicate with your web page with slightly diferent languages. The way a search engine operates depends on the way it indexes and categorizes pages. Google, for example, uses an algorithm involving "PageRank" to determine what will show up in the results. In Google's own words:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.

What that means is that in order for you to get to the top of the search results on Google you need to make sure that important pages are linking to your site. Google will see that high-quality sites are linking to you and so Google will bump your site up in the results on the assumption that your site features valuable information. What's more, one vote from a really important site might count more than 100 votes from unimportant sites.

So if you wanted to get a better Google PageRank you should follow a few steps. Each step is more difficult than the last, but if you can get to the last step then you should be achieving consistently high traffic from Google.

Table of Contents

Make Your Site Link-Worthy

In order to get a solid search engine ranking you have to first make sure your website isn't a flaming pile of shit. If it's ugly then it better provide some excellent information which can be found nowhere else. If it's coded poorly and your links are old and point to dead sites, then your site better be able to attract visitors consistently despite this by providing invaluable or insightful content. Better yet, you should code correct and link only to live sites and provide good content.

There's a good chance that you cannot provide content that is that valuable. Honestly, I can't pull stuff like that out of my ass day after day, either. Few people can. That means you and me are going to have to get by using other methods.

Make it Look Good

You have to make it look good. Looking "good" means a different thing to every person. You have to take into account your target audience and what kind of experience they expect to have at a site like yours. Are they trying to be educated (you, for example, right now) or are they trying to be entertained? Do they want bells and whistles and bright colors or do they want a simple and clean design that's easy to navigate? You have to decide how your site is going to look and then build your site to suit your audience, and it has to be consistent from page to page.

You can offer standard quality information with an engaging and intuitive presentation and be more valuable to your visiors than a site with higher quality information and a confusing interface. If people can't use a site, or if the site hurts their eyes and gives them a headache, then they will leave and try not to come back.

People who surf the 'Net do so with goals in mind. And reading on the Internet isn't like reading a book. People tend to "scan" sites much more than they actually read word-for-word. So you don't want to bury the treasure. When someone first enters your site they should be able to find what they want within 10 seconds or less. That means you should have a set of links to the various areas of your site in a common location on every page of your site. That also means that your pages should feature the information you claim to have. If you have a page title or description which mis-states or exaggerates your content then someone will leave within that first 10 seconds and will probably never come back.

So, the first step you should take when trying to improve your site's search engine ranking is to ensure that you provide something on your site that is link-worthy. A site should have, above all else, a value. It should serve a purpose of some kind. Beyond than a site should be appealing to the eyes and it should take into account the expectations of the visitor. While all sites cannot be priceless, we are all capable of coding and designing sites which are not hideous and which provide our audience the chance to find what they want with minimal hassle or confusion.

Use Smart Meta Tags

Meta tags are used to communicate to browsers and search engines the content, audience, and purpose of a site (among other things which we will not consider right now). There are a few choice meta tags we will focus on which will help you get your page indexed correctly and treated how you want.

Keywords

The keyword meta tag allows you to specify a number of keywords which accurately describe your site and it should feature words which the page uses repeatedly and words which users might put into a search engine when looking for whatever it is you have to offer. For example I might use the following keywords on this page: "search engine

Description

The description meta tag allows you to specify a description of your site or the specific page the meta tag is found on. Many search indexes or engines will use your description when listing your site. This gives you an advantage because you can guarantee that your site will be described the way you want it to be. You should include a few keywords in the description.

Submit to Google

This is an obvious step. You should submit your site to Google, among others (Yahoo!, MSN, etc) so that you can be sure they spider your site. The reason I didn't suggest you do this as step one is simply because you should make sure your site doesn't completely suck before you submit it. You can do this first if you wanted, it really doesn't matter. I just wanted to really drive home the idea of first ensuring that you have an attractive and informative site. Because, like I keep syaing, a quality site with good content will always perform well.

And learn about Google's PageRank technology so that you can make sure your site looks good to the Google gods. A good technical resource for learning more about Google's PageRank technology is at WebWorkShop courtesy of Phil Craven. It's a bit heavy but it's well worth your time and you will definitely pick up a couple of good tips.

Get Links to Your Site

You should do a web search and find sites similiar to your own. You should pay special attention to the sites which come up first. Contact all those people via email. Politely ask them to link to your site. This is where having a nice site comes in to play. They won't even write back to you if your site is ugly and stupid. They will laugh and hit "DELETE" faster than you can say the word "please".

Make sure you mention that you will link to them, too. They want links just like you do. But they don't need a link from some chump with a bad site. And good sites are easy to recognize. So do some "footwork" and get out there and make some networking connections. Feel free to contact any site within the first ten pages of results, even. But don't sequester a link from a sketchy website, Google can penalize you for links to an from websites which have bad reputations.

One kind of website which leaves a bad taste in Google's mouth is the "link farm". Link farms invite you to add your URL and they will link to you. It's just a collection of links, most of which point to crap pages and none of which get any hits via the farm. It's a stupid idea that desperate webmasters use which will never do them any good. So avoid them like the plague. Also don't link to or get links from spammers, obviously. If a site looks shady, stay away.

One way to get links to your site is to go post in forums which are related to your site. Don't just go and spam the forum with your dumb comments. Instead add your URL to your signature line and go make some well-informed comments. As long as your signature displays you will be creating a link to your site. First, though, use a search engine to see if that forum is indexed - if it's not you will waste your time.

Update Often

You should update as often as possible. Don't update just for the sake of updating, though. But you should add to your site whenever possible and worthwhile. An updated site is looked highly upon.