Search engines generate some 7% of traffic to web sites, and they are the top source for new visitors. You can't afford to ignore the traffic which search engines generate.
"We don't know very
much about search engines, but without us doing anything, all
our product pages are automatically
indexed in many of them because our software uses HTML-generated
pages."
Charlotte Johnson
The Gentleman's Shop
Building your site with a software package that generates static HTML pages will give it the best chance of catching the eye of the search engines. Using such a packge, and with no previous experience Charlotte Johnson of The Gentleman's Shop built a web site (www.gentlemans-shop.co.uk) that accounted for 20% of their turnover within a few months. Much of the site traffic comes as a result of people using search engines.
A little time spent actively promoting your site to the major search engines can deliver dramatic returns, as Mike Howarth of Lancashire-based jeweller R&J Howarth discovered. "We were initially pleased at getting 1500 visitors each month to our site (www.jewellers.net), with over a 1000 of those being international customers. Now the total figure is around 35,000 per month."
In the UK, Google is by far the most-used search site, followed by Yahoo! and MSN.
Seventy five percent of users don't go beyond the second page of search engine results. That means if your site isn't in the top 20 results, you will hardly be noticed. So make sure at least one page on your site - preferably your home page - is set up as described here, to give yourself the best possible chance of getting noticed.
Choose two or three key phrases that customers use to search for a product or service like yours. Avoid single words or very broad terms - there will be so many sites in these kinds of category that you will be very unlikely to get ranked on the first or second pages. To find out roughly how many pages exist that match your chosen phrase, search for it on Google and check the . For example searching for 'birds' yields over 105 million pages, and searching for 'parrots' yields over 5 million, but searching for 'african grey parrot ' yields less than a million relevant pages. To get an idea of how many people are searching for your chosen phrase, sign up for the Google Adwords program.
Don't try and cover too many phrases in a single page. If you need to use more phrases, set up separate pages for them. Take a look at your competitors' sites to see what key words they are using.
In the header section of your home page include Meta tags (Description and Keywords) that contain your key phrases.
Create a Title tag of 7-8 words that includes the same key words. For example, suppose you are running a sailing site called 'Seven Seas Sailing' and you have decided that 'boats for sale' and 'yachts for sale' are the search phrases your potential customers are most likely to use. You would set up your meta tags something like this:
<head>
<title>Seven Seas Sailing: Boats And Yachts For Sale</title>
<meta name="description" content="boats for sale, yachts for sale and everything you need to know about sailing" / >
<meta name="keywords" content=sailing, seven, seas, boats, yachts
for
sale" / >
</head>
Work the key phrases naturally into the text of the page at least four, starting near the top. If your page is based on a table, the top means near the top of the left-hand column.
Include the phrases in Alt text attached to images, eg
<img src="yacht.gif" alt=" boats for sale, yachts for sale " / >
Get as many links to your pages as possible from other relevant, well-ranking sites. This will improve your ranking on Google and other major search engines.
Don't put text in small or white or the same colour as the background - you may be penalised for doing so.
Don't use frames. Search engines may not through them. However well your pages are optimised, they won't get ranked if the search engines can only find the frameset page. Many search engine specialists do use frames to present additional information to search engines, or to 'cloak' pages and make them appear differently to search engines than to end users; but it's very easy to get blacklisted for spamming using these techniques. If you want to use them, employ a specialist.
Manually submit your pages to the major search engines listed below . Some require payment.
To see how your site ranks with the search engines, visit one of the many sites that offer this as a free service (search the web for 'free position checker' to find them), or download a copy of the WebPostion Gold free trial from www.web-positiongold.com.
Search engine optimisation is still as much an art as a science, there are no guarantees, and the results can range from the spectacular to the bizarre and inexplicable. Love them or hate them, they are still a major source of web traffic - ignore them at your peril.