Archive for September, 2009

Search engines read words. This simple sentence is so important we’re going to repeat it. Search engines read words. Another way to say this is page content is very important in getting a high search engine ranking.

No matter how it is said, it means that if you want to come up high on the search results you need to have words on your pages.

According to search engine gurus, for best rankings there should be between 200 and 600 words per page for the search engine to index. This text needs to contain your keywords/phrases. That’s just common sense. But that doesn’t mean just putting your keywords down at the bottom a hundred times. That will get your site flagged as a spammer. You need to work your keywords naturally into the content so they are visible for the search engines and easily read and understood by the reader.

It is important to note here that search engines only read the text content of a website. Words displayed in graphics or as part of a flash presentation cannot be seen by the search engines. While these do display your message to a person visiting your site they are invisible to search engines. Using graphics to display words not only prevents search engines from reading your site, it also effectively blocks your content from being read by “reading” programs used by the visually impaired and from people who have images turned off.

Only the text content of a website can be seen and indexed by the search engines.

This sounds easy. You just use your keywords a lot when writing your content. But remember that when you’re making your content keyword rich, it still needs to read correctly for a real person.

Here are some ways to make your pages a quick, easy and interesting read, while also making them search engine friendly:

• Your keywords/phrases should be used in the first sentence of the page, as the first words if possible.
• Use at least 200 words per page.
• Don’t try and use all your keywords on one page. It is smarter to optimize each page of the site for one or two words and spread the keywords over different pages.
• Use your keywords/phrases as a natural part of your content. Just be sure you use them.
• Use keywords in your bullet items when you’re making your point. This is not only good for the search engines, readers often scan the bullet points first before reading the rest of the content.
• Highlight (bold) keywords in sentences where applicable
• Use keywords in your hypertext links
• Keywords should also be used in the page title (Read our post on Page Titles)

Summary:

Search engines read words. Keywords are what bring those visitors to the website. Good writing and useful information are what makes a site “sticky” (holds the visitor’s attention). Good writing using keywords will not only bring visitors to your site but keep them there as well.

In the next post we will discuss how to use keywords to make your images work for you in increasing your search engine visibility.

A “site map” is a file on a website that helps you find things on that site. There are two kinds of site maps both of which make your website more usable.

The first is a simple page on your website that lists – usually in outline format – the most important pages on your site. Sometimes a user will have difficulty finding what they are looking for with the normal navigation menus on a page so a site map provides an easy way to scan the titles of all the pages on your site. Also, the links on a site map are easily seen by a search engine so it is another way to ensure they check all of the pages on your website.

Here is what CityCenter’s site map page looks like:

A site map provides an easy way to quickly see the pages on a website

The second type of site map is specifically designed for search engines. It is a simple text file, but it is structured in a particular way, named “sitemap.xml” and contains specific information:

• URL (web address) of the web page
• the date and time that page was last modified
• how often it is usually changed, and
• what you think its relative importance is (compared to other pages on your site)

Here is what one line of a sitemap.xml file looks like:

<url><loc>http://www.citycent.com/about.htm</loc>
<lastmod>2009-06-12T05:37:02+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq><priority>0.50</priority></url>

It’s somewhat readable, but not something you’d really want to type out yourself. Luckily there are lots of online services (many free) and programs that will create a sitemap.xml file for you:

• http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/4
• http://sitemapdoc.com/
• http://www.addme.com/ror-sitemap-generator.htm
• http://gsitecrawler.com/

Some of those services also provide an editor so you can make modifications to the site map. Most often you’ll want to edit the “priority” field. The system works on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0 with 1.0 having the highest priority. Setting a page to 1.0 won’t get it a higher ranking with Google, but it will tell the search engine viewing your site that that page is more important than others. But if you set everything to 1.0 then there is no difference and the search engine won’t be able to tell what you think has a higher priority. Usually you would put your home page at 1.0, your primary product or service page as 0.9 and pages that few people will need as a 0.1 or 0.2.

Once your site map is created you need to name it sitemap.xml and upload it to the main directory of your website – the same place your home page is. You’ll want to be sure that the file is structured properly or the search engines won’t be able to read it. Again, there are many free online services that will validate the file for you:

• http://www.validome.org/google/
• http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/validate-xml-sitemap.html
• http://www.webmasterwebtools.com/sitemap-validation/index.php

Google and other search engines will look for your site map and factor that information into their review of your site and the index they create for it.

So both types of site maps – one for humans and one for search engines – will help your website be more useful and visible. If you need help in creating either of these for your website please let us know.