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Online Marketing TipsSEO BasicsOverviewSEO, or Search Engine Optimization, describes any number of processes that all seek the same thing: higher ranking in search results. Algorithms used by SE (search engine) companies are closely guarded secrets, so what follows are commonly accepted deductions. This article will stick to simple modifications that can be done within the HTML document. Modifications are listed in order of importance, from greatest to least. If nothing else, develop page titles and headings; these are the most important.
Found within the <head> section of HTML documents. This should describe the page, your business name, location, and product or service. Avoid including a large number of unrelated or semi-related words. This may be perceived as spam, which is penalized by SEs. Keep the character count low, regardless (typically under 180 characters). Example: <title>Services of Fort Smith Delivery Crew | Local courier, metro transport, and fragile or oversized goods to your home</title>
Delineate the topical points of interest, as if the document was created from an outline. Your browser will likely bold and enlarge the font size, as well. On this page, the very top heading is SEO Basics, which is the broadest term covering this article. As such, it is marked as <h1>. The headings that follow (Overview, Page Title, etc) are <h2>. Any subheadings within those are noted <h3>, and then <h4> beneath those, and so on. This page's heading outline looks like this:
This is any text within the <body> field, meaning all the text visible on a typical browser-rendered page. All pages should contain thorough yet concise and accurate language that makes good use of synonyms to increase the potential search words. A popular tactic is to create a wall of gibberish, which is a very large body of text filled with popular and hopefully relevant search terms. This has come into acceptance among web designers so long as it is out of the way. It is best written using proper syntax and punctuation or else it may be rejected by SEs as spam. Since the quality of the body text ranks very close in importance to page title and headings, it is recommended that this tactic be used with caution and keen insight so that it doesn't backfire. Additionally, a webmaster may add a FAQ (frequently asked questions), hints and tips, or other educational pages that list, for example, novel ways to use the company's product. These add to the body of searchable text, cut down on time devoted to answering often-asked questions or pursuing dead leads, and promote your business by showing potential customers both generosity and expertise. Lastly, in the same way that attention is given to headings, a very small amount of weight may be given to text in bold, italics, or underline, as well as ordered and unordered lists denoted by <li> and other tags. However, these are not worth pursuing except for adding to visitors' ease of reading by using bulleted lists. You can see a list in action by viewing the headings outline in the above topic. LinkingGoogle, the SE with the greatest market share, places heavy emphasis on link behavior. Quality links possess the following characteristics:
Meta DataMeta data describes objects in many contexts, but only the meta field in the <head> section will be discussed. Three name tags are relevant to SE results: description, keyword, and robots. RobotsRobots automatically index pages, but in rare cases it is preferable that they don't. For instance, having a considerable amount of links or text of no relevance to the overall site on one page may harm SE ranking. Robots may be blocked by entering noindex (robot doesn't index page), nofollow (robot ignores links), or none (robot does neither) into the content field. Conversely, robots may be commanded by index, follow, and all. Example: To command robots to index a page, but disregard links, enter <meta name="robots" content="index,nofollow"> Robots may also commanded to return after a specified time period by entering <meta name="revisit-after" content="7 days">, whereby content describes the desired time period. This is useful if the page is updated often.
DescriptionThe description field bears little importance except for the SE results display. Entering a description is voluntary, and is best used to control a page's presentation. If no description is entered, the SE will display the text surrounding a user's queried words. To better illustrate where a description appears, Google displays the following entry for the query absolute designs plus. The description field is highlighted in yellow. Web Site Design Fort Smith Arkansas Web Designs Hosting in Fort Smith
In this case, the description has been entered as <meta name="description" content="Arkansas web design at it's finest! Professional Website Design. Designing Web sites that get noticed. See our Award Winning Websites."> If no description has been entered, the entry for the query example.com will appear as follows, quoting a portion of the body text that surrounds the queried words: example.com - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A description's main purpose is to entice users to visit a site based on their own evaluation. Think of it as a sales pitch. A relevant sales pitch. Visitors will not be impressed by visiting what they thought would be pet advice, only to end up at a chemical supplier. KeywordsKeywords have been more or less discarded by search engines, especially Google. This is mainly due to webmasters using irrelevant terms to prop up their search results. Still, some SEs give relevance to them. If nothing else, enter at least a half dozen relevant terms describing the page's content. Example: Describe the Valentine's Day flower specials page with <meta name="keywords" content="valentines, special, sale, bouquet, flowers, red roses, floral, arrangement">. Spaces after commas should be omitted, and only appear here for ease of reading. Supplemental PracticesSearch Engine SubmissionSubmitting a site to a search engine is no longer necessary unless it is not linked to from an outside source of which a particular SE is aware. For a new domain, or a new site at the same domain, it is perfectly fine to submit. Submission places the URL into queue for the crawlers to visit, though it may take over a week for the site to be indexed. Whatever you do, DO NOT pay anyone or use special software and methods to submit your website. Some of these companies are shady, and may employ practices that violate the TOS of SEs which will permanently ban the site from ever appearing in search results. Besides, submitting can be done for free quite easily. Submit your site to Google If it is relevant to your target market, consider submitting to the popular search engines of foreign countries. Further TweakingThe Big Three provide free tools that analyze a site, point out weaknesses, provide suggestions, and other pointers that help their bots better crawl a site as well as helping your site succeed. Google Analytics
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