Search Engine Outlook By Danny Sullivan feedback@calafia.com Search Engine Optimization: The Science And The Art For the record, let me confess my agenda: I agree 100 percent with Joel Gehman's recent article on search engine optimization, where he urges site owners not to obsess over rankings. I've advised the same thing from the very beginning at Search Engine Watch, when I first posted optimization advice over two years ago. I consider it one of the most important tips I offer. Yet sadly, it's one of the most ignored. Gehman was also concerned that people get lost in the "how-to" practicalities of optimization, as opposed to concentrating on "big picture" issues. I also agree. I do cover big picture issues at my site, but I thought it would be helpful to highlight some here. So, forget those questions about how many times you can repeat a word in a meta tag, whether using a header tag around a word helps relevancy and all those other concerns. Instead, let's talk about systemic improvements that you can and should make across a site as a whole. From The Top Search engines are a primary way that people find web sites, and yet most site owners fail to consider them when they build sites. This failure means that sites miss out on traffic that they might otherwise receive "naturally." By naturally, I mean traffic that would be yours if you did nothing other than ensure that search engines could properly crawl your site. For example, many sites make use of dynamic delivery methods such as Cold Fusion. A problem is that these methods often use URLs that include a ? symbol in them. That ? symbol keeps many search engines from crawling web pages. Find a way around this problem. There's an easy solution for Cold Fusion, and one site owner I know that made this change increased his traffic by 300 visitors per day. He did nothing other than ensure the site could be crawled. That's not obsessing over search engines - that's just being competent. Likewise, if you are considering a dynamic solution, ensure it won't cause problems with the search engines. Don't just implement it, and then discover to your horror that you've put up a roadblock. Here's an easy test. Submit a typical URL to Infoseek or AltaVista. If you see the page appear in a few days, you're probably okay. If not, you may have problems. Frames are another nightmare. If you have a site that uses them, really consider getting rid of them. If you are building a site or redesigning, drop the idea of frames right now. In many cases, frames are unnecessary navigational crutches. They always pose significant problems for search engines. It is simply poor marketing to use them, in many cases. You wouldn't build a site that favored Internet Explorer users over Netscape users. Similarly, consider search engines to be a third browser - and an important one - which can't understand frames. Exclude the engines, and you're only hurting yourself. Two Design Tips So far, we haven't mentioned any real "optimization" tips. Below are two general tasks that you should implement across your site. These should be done at the producer or page designer level, and it shouldn't take more than one or two minutes per page. That's not much time, but it can still produce some dramatic results. Title Require that every page gets a unique title that reflects the theme of that page in about four or five words. Don't worry about creating the "best" title that incorporates crucial search terms. That's nice to do, but we're talking fast and easy. Just eyeball the page. Chances are, you'll come up with a half-decent title that will help with the search engines. Yeah yeah, you say. No, really! This is a must! Titles are still crucial elements to search engines, and too many sites use the same title for ALL their pages, often just the company name. Don't waste this valuable real estate. Meta tags Require that every page have a meta description tag, and that the content of this tag is the first two or three sentences of the main body copy. This is easy to do - it takes all of about 15 seconds. It is much better than leaving it to the search engines to grab the first 200 characters from your pages for the basis of its own descriptions. Assuming you do rank well, do you really want a description that reads: "Home - Click Here To Visit Our Advertiser - Site Map"? There's also a good chance that the first sentences of your page will contain important search terms. Putting these higher in your description tag can help your ranking. What about the meta keywords tag? Forget it. We're in a hurry, and people obsess too much about this tag. You've already made some important changes. Adding this tag is not worth the time your designers will spend worrying about it. Submit Properly Ensure that your site is properly submitted to the major search engines. Each page that is listed is an extra opportunity to be found, even if this page has not been heavily optimized. In fact, many pages without any overt optimization at all can outperform optimized attempts. But, they have to be listed to have a fighting chance. Here's one quick tip. Infoseek will accept hundreds of URLs, if you email them to the service. Why leave it to the crawler? Make a list of pages in your site and send it off. This is an easy step to improve your representation. Forget Position Checking I love tools like WebPosition and PositionAgent for checking rankings. However, the best measure of success comes from analyzing your server logs. Use these to monitor your overall traffic from each search engine on a monthly basis. By doing this, instead of fixating on your rank for a particular term, you'll discover that a drop in ranking may not necessarily result in a huge traffic drop. If you do see a drop, chances are it's a situation where you have pages that are missing from the search engine. Use this traffic review as a guide to when you need to resubmit. A high percentage of traffic from the search engines is a sure sign of a site that has a dangerous search engine dependency. Build up traffic from other sources, so that you are isolated from the vagaries of search engine-related traffic. Lobby For Editorial Links Search engines understand that their algorithms don't work perfectly. To compensate, they are making lots of moves to provide editorial links in relation to certain searches. A classic test is to search for "Microsoft" or "Netscape." Did you find a link somewhere to these sites, either in the search results or nearby? There's probably an editorial component involved with putting it there. It makes sense, because that's what many users want. Likewise, if you have a well-known brand, it is worth lobbying for editorial links to ensure search engine users can find you. After all, that's probably what they are looking for, so it's in the search engine's interest to accommodate the change. Send a letter, or pick up the phone, and politely make your case. Lobbying isn't for everyone. Don't insist that you should be found for generic terms like "money," "news" or "sports." There is too much disagreement over who is most "relevant" for these types of terms. But for brand-related terms, your suggestions will be much more convincing. Get On With Life Having covered the basics above, move on. Do other forms of publicity, with link building being a crucial and often overlooked one. Go to the search engines, search for those terms you want to be found for, and see what comes up. Then go to those sites and negotiate links. Some will be competitive - but many won't, and they will be willing to swap links. You do have a reciprocal links page, don't you? If not, establish one. This is the web, and "coopertition" rules. Traffic you think you're giving away will in turn come back to you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Danny Sullivan is the editor of Search Engine Watch, a site that deals with search engine issues for web marketers and general search engine users. Those looking for more specific optimization tips should see the site's Webmaster's Guide To Search Engines section. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Original source: http://www.webpromote.com/wpweekly/nov98vol4/search.html - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -