What Do Search Engines Want?

Search engines love simple web site designs. Fancy " bells and whistles," such as Flash, hinder a site's ability to score a premium position in the natural search results. What's assumed to be alluring to consumers is opposite of what search engines want.

Have you ever browsed the sites that rank well for a keyword and thought, "That's the UGLIEST site in the world. Why is it #1?" Unfortunately, ugly can often equal good rankings. Ugly to consumers usually means text-heavy web pages that seem to scroll down forever and are absent of ample images or multimedia. These are a perfectly delicious meal for search engine spiders; they don't have to sift through lengthy lines of complex code to find keywords. There's no code clutter.

Does this mean you're committed to an ugly site? Not at all, thank goodness! Watch your use of sophisticated design elements and place keywords in the locations described in this chapter. These are merely the basic components of an SEO foundation, but when used in unison they unquestionably influence rankings. I've prioritized them from the easiest to the most difficult to implement in an existing site. To illustrate several of these elements, I've referenced International Crystal Manufacturing Co, Inc. (http://www.icmfg.com), a company that provides crystals, oscillators , and filters for the military.

Link Popularity

This task makes your Webmaster happy; no web site design modifications are necessary to increase your link popularity. Well, the traditional definition of it anyway.

Link popularity generally refers to the number and quality of content-relevant web sites that link to yours. Search engines place a heavy evaluation emphasis on inbound links because it's assumed that if other sites link to yours, you offer valuable content to web users. An inbound link therefore appears as an online testimonial to search engine spiders. Popular sites score major ranking points.

Important

An inbound link points from another web site to yours. An outbound link is one on your site that hyperlinks to another site.

Google offers a downloadable toolbar for Internet Explorer that indicates a site's link popularity (http://www.google.com/options).

One of the toolbar's beneficial features is PageRank, which shows Google's ranking of a current page based in large part on link popularity. After you download the toolbar, visit a web site page and mouse over the PageRank bar to reveal the score. As you can see in Figure 10.1, International Crystal Manufacturing's home page has a PageRank score of 4 out of a possible 10 points.

Figure 10.1. International Crystal Manufacturing's home page has a PageRank score of 4/10.

Four simple steps pave the pathway to your popularity, as described in the following sections.

Tip

Plan a few weeks to execute a link campaign. It doesn't have to be a full-time job, but it typically takes a few weeks to complete the communication with your link partners .

Step 1: Identify High-Ranked Sites

Avoid web rings that only link from one site to another site in a circular pattern. Don't place links to your site in guestbooks, classified ads, or forums either. These tactics are considered "spam" by the search engines because the sole purpose of these methods is to trick search engines into thinking your site is popular based on the number of inbound links. Once your site is banned from a search engine's database, even an SEO firm might not be able to get you back in without considerable time, energy, and money.

Instead, run a search for your primary keywords to request a link from fewer, but content-relevant, web sites. For instance, a link from a military or government web site would be a stronger link for International Crystal Manufacturing than one from "Bob's" personal site.

Step 2: Request an Inbound Link

The most efficient way of asking for a site link is to email the Webmaster or marketing director. (I've received a 10 ‚ 50% acceptance rate for clients using this method.) It's imperative to customize each email to get a response and, more importantly, avoid being mislabeled as a spammer. Here are a few tips:

• These days, it's best to use the personal email address of the marketing director (call, or surf the site for this information), not a generic address listed on the site. Address the person by his or her name in your message.

• Avoid generic subject lines and "spammy" words such as "free." Although "link request" is accurate, it could nowadays be viewed as spam, without a little more information. "I'm interested in marketing opportunities on <site name>" should at least get your email opened.

• Be upfront about requesting a link to your site. Include reasons why visitors to their site would benefit by visiting yours.

• Prove that you've reviewed their site by mentioning something specific about it. Comment on a recent accomplishment discussed in a press release, for example. A generic "I liked your site" or "We're a good match" message sounds like spam and may be deleted.

• If you're willing to link to their site in exchange, or have already done so, state the URL where their link will be displayed on your site.

Important

Request a free link first, and then consider asking about advertising opportunities if you don't get a response. A paid link from a site that complements yours can improve your link popularity score, plus send new prospects your way.

Step 3: Hyperlink Keywords in Your Description

Hopefully, you'll negotiate a listing that contains a brief description of your site, in addition to a company name and link. Include one of your keyword phrases in your description. This phrase should be hyperlinked to your web site.

Here's a sample site description using the keyword "precision crystals" that International Crystal Manufacturing could submit in a link request:

International Crystal Manufacturing manufactures a broad line of custom precision crystals (link to: http://www.icmfg.com/precisioncrystals.html) for use in military applications, communications, microwave transmission, data acquisition and transmission, and cutting edge research.

Important

Researching sites is the most time-consuming portion of a link campaign. Want a little extra help? Hire an intern to surf the web looking for relevant content sites. Instead of or in addition to hiring an intern, you can use a link-building tool such as Zeus, developed by Cyber-Robotics (http://www.cyber- robotics .com).

Step 4: Use Relevant Landing Pages

Divide your inbound links among secondary theme pages; don't send them all to the home page. Your home page has its own master theme. Because each site page should be optimized for a different but related group of keywords, each page needs its own inbound links. Remember that individual site pages, not entire sites, compete for rankings. As a follow-up to the example given in Step 3, Figure 10.2 shows the site page International Crystal Manufacturing would want to link to for the keyword "precision crystals."

Figure 10.2. Direct your inbound link to the landing page that relates to the keyword you hyperlinked. For "precision crystals," International Crystal Manufacturing should link to this page.

Meta Data

Meta data , or meta tags , provides information about the content of a web page. It's an HTML tag that doesn't impact page layout but contains data attributes.

In the early days of SEO, simply placing keywords in these tags influenced page rankings significantly. Today, numerous search engine marketers proclaim, "Meta tags are dead!" Are they dead? As a sole tactic to boost rankings ‚ yes. As a way to enhance the copy of your listings in search results ‚ no.

When search engines pull a title and description for your web site listing, a majority will display the meta data you provide. Without meta data, search engines typically grab the first text lines from the page. Ever see listings in search results with a date, copyright information, or other useless text? Yuck. Not appealing to potential customers. Use meta data as a way to control your web site listings and prevent search engines from randomly selecting irrelevant copy from your site. There are three meta tags to use:

• Title

• Description

• Keywords

Look at the meta data for International Crystal Manufacturing's page on precision crystals as an example (Figure 10.3). Write custom copy for the meta data of each web page you want to rank well in the search engines. You can also review your competitors' HTML code for ideas. (To view the meta data of your competitors ' pages, click on Edit, View Source in the browser toolbar.)

Figure 10.3. The meta data for International Crystal Manufacturing's page on precision crystals is at the top of the source code.

Headings

Headings are generally phrases placed above the first paragraph of page content, acting as a headline. Visitors are encouraged to read headings first, as are search engine spiders. Therefore, it's a great place to include keywords that describe the overall theme of that page.

Webmasters need to incorporate an <h1> to an <h6> tag. The International Crystal's Precision Page uses an <h1> tag, and the HTML code looks like this:

 <h1>Precision Crystals</h1> 

Page Copy

Your web site copy makes or breaks your rankings. Rankings are all about relevancy. Where do search engines look for keywords when evaluating web sites? The words on each page. If you display keywords to visitors, then your pages are indeed relevant for these terms.

Unfortunately, numerous companies incorporate their existing marketing material into their sites. This copy won't contain all of the relevant keywords you now know that your target audience is looking for in search engines.

You'll also need to study your competitors' pages that rank well to see how many total words they're using and how many times that keyword is mentioned. Analyze their average word usage as a formula for your own web site.

Hypertext Links

As you're editing the copy on one page, incorporate keywords from your other web pages. Then hotlink the keywords to the corresponding pages within your site. Even though cross-links are not weighed the same as inbound links from other sites, if they can help, place keywords in your own hypertext links.

Tip

Companies still make the mistake of hotlinking "click here" in their site content. Yikes. Nobody types this phrase into a search engine. It's a wasted link. Hyperlink a keyword phrase instead.

You should be careful of a few elements when working with hyperlinks to prevent being flagged as a spammer by search engines:

• Don't hide links. This includes placing links in areas of your code other than visible body copy. It won't help your rankings, and if caught your site pages could suffer spam penalties.

• Check your link-to-copy ratio. This is problematic for e-commerce sites that exclusively pair product photos with links to an order form. Where are the product descriptions? Again, because search engines reward sites with valuable information, if 80% of a site page is full of hyperlinks, this won't outrank a content-rich page. Think content before commerce.

Alternative Text

Your site probably has at least a couple of images, or perhaps graphics-based navigation. You can place keywords inside the alternative text in the HTML code for these images. When you roll over an image you'll see the alternative text appear in a box, if the web designer set this up.

International Crystal Manufacturing mentions "precision crystals" in a few graphic images. Check out all of the keywords, however, in the company's logo. Although you don't want to repeat the same set of keywords in every <alt> tag, it's appropriate (as shown in Figure 10.4) to include more than one in a prime location, such as a logo.

Figure 10.4. Place alternative text inside your site's graphic images. Use a keyword phrase relevant to that page. The <alt> tag for ICM's logo has several keywords.

The HTML code for the alternative text highlighted in Figure 10.4 looks like this:

 <img src="images/icmlogo1.gif" width="152" height="55" alt="International Crystal Manufacturing (ICM) offers a broad range of quartz crystals, precision crystals, oscillators, filters, TCXO / VCTCXOs, and Quartz Microbalance products."> 

URL/File Names

Search engine marketers argue over the importance of keywords in the URL or file names. International Crystal Manufacturing's web site is:

http://www.icmfg.com

The company could have used its full name, which would have given them the words "crystal" and "crystal manufacturing":

http://www.internationalcrystalmanufacturing.com/

Of course, that's a hideously long URL for anyone to type into a browser toolbar. Avoid frustrating your prospects who see your URL on business cards, brochures , or print ads and then go to the web to type it. Don't use numerous characters in your URL if possible. Remember: search engines, important. Customers, more important.

Some search engine marketers would argue to keep ICM's full name as the domain because of the keywords that are included. A shorter version of the URL could be used in the company's marketing materials. ICM has included keywords in the site's directory file names. Refer back to Figure 10.4 and notice the URL of their precision crystal page:

http://www.icmfg.com/precisioncrystals.html

Keywords could be grouped together, as shown here. Or they could be separated by an underscore or hyphen, as illustrated next . Marketers don't agree on one format of the three either. Some believe that keywords in URLs make no difference whatsoever.

>http://www.icmfg.com/precision_crystals.html

http://www.icmfg.com/precision-crystals.html

Tip

It may be a good idea to group keywords together in the file name instead of separating them with underscores or hyphens. The latter two are becoming associated with spam tactics, and if continually used by spammers could eventually jeopardize your page rankings.

Search engine marketers do agree on one thing: The use of keywords in domains or file names on a site lacking solid content will get banned. In early 2003, I spotted a bunch of these keyword-based domains in the insurance industry. The web pages had no valuable content, and apparently one company owned multiple domains and simply linked them all together. The web ring issue was probably the biggest red flag to search engines, but even so, a few months later these organic listings started to disappear out of the Top 10 rankings. The search engines had obviously caught on.