Designing Page Content for Search Engines
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This page discusses the design of pages with respect to content.
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Beginning of Page
Search engines typically weight content at the beginning of a page
especially heavily, so make sure that the very first
heading and paragraph of the page summarizes the page
(just like the headline and first paragraph of a news story should
tell the reader what the story is about) and quickly answers any
"who, what, where, when and why" questions a viewer might have.
Use Headers
Use Header tags to indicate major subject matter
on your web pages rather than using them as synonyms for "BIG FONT".
Normally the first header (H1) will be the same as the TITLE.
Search engines often consider header text particularly important;
they can easily tell that a particular piece of text is a header if
you mark it up as such by enclosing it in an <Hn> element;
they have a much harder time discovering
this if you merely enclose it in <FONT> elements.
Have a descriptive paragraph at the top of your page.
Put important information near the TOP of your page
(the first paragraph) - not the bottom.
- This paragraph should be used in the HTML Head and in your
introductory blurb.
- It is what search engines will usually display to the user if your
page is among the results of the query.
- It is what people that manually index the web will usually use
for an annotation.
The first few sentences of that page must sell your service.
You may achieve a top 10 ranking, but if the 2 or 3 line description
that the search engine extracts from the top of your page
(or your META tag) sounds dull or uninviting, they will scroll
right past you and choose a page that looks more interesting.
The summary description that is generally extracted
from your META Description tag or from the first part of your
page is crucial to your position's effectiveness.
If a page lacks descriptive text,
then there is little chance this page will come in high in results
of a query of a search engine.
It is not enough for this text to be in the graphics.
It has to be HTML text.
Some search engines will catalogue ALT text and text in the comment and
META tags.
Use Meaningful Text in Your Page
Catalogues of search engines contain the text read from the pages
they have visited.
If you want your web page to be found using some key words,
be sure to include these words near the beginning of the web page.
If you don't want your site to be found using some key words,
make sure they are not included on the web page.
Improving Relevancy
The earch engine makes determination about relevant words based on
how words are used on the page.
A short, one paragraph page will often rank higher than a long wordy
page even though the longer page may include the phrase more
times.
That's because many search engines divide the number of keywords
by the number of total words on the page to score the page
for "relevancy." Therefore, it's often the concentration
of that phrase/keyword that matters more than the sheer frequency.
Search engines will then take this score and add additional
weight to keywords found in the TITLE tag, heading tags, and
the first 200 or so words of the page. (All words are generally
indexed, but those near the top will carry the most "weight").
Try both a long and short page and see how you do, since sometimes
a longer page may do better.
Use the keyword early;
with most engines, having your best keyword at the beginning
of your TITLE tag will raise your rank considerably over simply
putting the keyword in the middle or the end of the TITLE.
The same rule applies to the location of the keyword in the
content of the page. The sooner in the page it appears, the
better. This is called the "prominence" score for the keyword.
Don't try to say everything on this one page or you'll dilute
your effectiveness for the page in relation to the search
engines. Keep the copy exciting and upbeat so they'll feel
compelled to click on your next link.
This is crucial - you'll get traffic to that page, but you'll not get
many who proceed on to the rest of the site. Draw them in
deeper!
Graphics
Attach keyworded ALT text to graphics;
if a graphic demonstrates a menu or image map make sure the alt tag
contains proper keywords. That is to say, don't add an alt tag that
says "image map", rather add one that says "map to html authoring, html
resources, web-design styles" etc.
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