Search Engine Optimizer

Outbound Links

Cross Linking Builds Link Popularity

Many webmasters are extremely reluctant to put links to other websites on their own site. The argument is that they don’t want people to leave their site. The problem is that by doing this, your site exists in a vacuum, and can lose link popularity. Ultimately, this decision is up to you, but outbound links are an important element to boosting your position. Remember, one of your main goals is to link to others and have them link to you.

Who to link to

Believe it or not, the best thing you could do for building link popularity it to link out to your competition, and have them link to you. The reason is that your competition will likely be categorized the same as you, so you will gain points for ‘common interest’. Naturally, you are not likely to do this. Still, you should try to provide links of interest to the people that visit your site. Chances are that these will help more than some random sites.

Linking out and bringing people back

As mentioned above, you don’t want to lose visitors by linking away from your site. The answer to this problem is to open all outbound links in a new window, so the user still has a browser window on your page. You can do this by setting the target to “blank” as follows:

<a href=”www.otherdomain.com” target=”_blank”>Outbound Link</a>

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Site Depth

Planning your content

It should be clear by now that the most important factor in getting good results on search engines is having a great deal of relevant textual content on your website. Following are a few more pointers to help:

Depth of your site

When planning the structure of your site, you will certainly want to organize it into folders and subfolders in order to make is easy to manage. Consider that different spiders have different limits as to how deep they will go into a site. A good rule of thumb is no more than 2 or 3 levels deep.

Interconnecting Pages

Regardless of how your site is organized, your pages shoould link to one another as much as possible. Besides just menu links, put links to connect your pages in your paragraph text. Wherever your content references a subject that is covered on another page, be sure to link to that page. More links connecting your pages to one another can really help your ranking.

Small Sites

Some sites are just small. If this is the case with your site, you are at a huge disadvantage. Try to find a way to beef up your site as much as possible with more pages. It will go a long way.

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Folder and File Names

You may not put much thought into how you name the files and folders in your website, but consider that they do make up part of the text in your page, so they should be considered. In fact, some search engines appear to consider them to be very important in their ranking.

Look at it this way: Which appears more meaningful to you?

1) http://www.flyfishingnow.com/tackle/tackle-products.htm

2) http://www.flyfishing.com/products/home.htm

Naturally, the first listing tells you what to expect, right? A search engine spider may make the same determination.

Consider this for Folder Names, Page filenames, image filenames, etc. Use your keywords here and give engines mroe to find.

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Hidden Text

Hiding keywords from human eyes

There are ways you can hide text from people in your web page, which some search engines may actually consider in their ranking. Beware, however, that this is a practice that is not favored, and could hurt your ranking, as it may be seen as an action to make search engines see something humans cannot.

To hide text, use the following format:

<!– Your text goes here –>

The above text will not show up in the browser.

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Anchor Tags

The construction of a hyperlink

The anchor tag is that tag that creates a hyperlink on your web page. As with so many other elements of a page, you should consider what text is in your anchor tags.

<A href=”flyfishing.htm”>Our Fly Fishing Products </A>

Note that the filename and the text on the link both contain keywords. Keep this in mind, as it will really help you.

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ALT Tags

Semi Hidden Text that can go a long way.

When you place an image on a page, you have the option to assign ‘alternate text’ to the image. This is text that shows while the image is loading, or if you hover your mouse cursor over the image. Most WYSIWYG HTML editors just ignore this when you place an image on a page, or simply add the file name. You can put any text you want here, and many search engines will consider this text when ranking your page.

This is a great place to fit in your keywords while describing what an image is. The format is as follows:

<img src=”image.gif” alt=”Enter your alt text here “>

This may not seem like much, but every little bit adds up to what can make a huge difference.

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Heading Tag

<H1>Rarely used, but important</H1>

The Heading tag is an HTML tag that many of us no longer use in the world of WYSIWYG HTML editors, however, some search engines look at Heading text as more important that other text ona web page.

Typically, the Heading is at the top of a page, or above paragraphs of text. When you use Heading text, be sure to use your important keywords.

Changing the look of the heading text

If you use stylesheets, you can control the look of the text in the heading tag so that it fits the look and feel of your site.

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Other META Tags

There is much more to META

The most popular META tags are Keywords and Description, but there are many others for various purposes. The only other META tag not already mentioned that will affect your search engine performance is the META Robots Tag.

The ROBOTS tag tells a spider if it should index a page in your site. The syntax is:

<META NAME=”robots” CONTENT=”all”>

The content has the following options:

all
The page should be indexed. All links on this page will be followed and those pages ahould be indexed.

none
The page should not be indexed and no links should be followed

index
The page should be indexed

noindex
The page should not be indexed, but links should be followed

follow
A ll links should be followed

nofollow
The page should be indexed, but links should not be followed

Examples:
<meta name=”ROBOTS” content=”NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW”>
<meta name=”ROBOTS” content=”INDEX, NOFOLLOW”>
<meta name=”ROBOTS” content=”NOINDEX, FOLLOW”>

If you are interested in further exploring META Tags, have a look at Cyberspace HQ’s Accutagger product, which automates the handling of all possible META tags for your site.

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META Description

Telling Search Engines what you want them to do, Part 2

The META Description tag on your web page is a way to tell search engines what description you want them to use on your listing, and helps with your keyword relevancy. Unfortunately, more and more engines no longer rely on META Tags. However, some still use them, so you should certainly pay attention to them.

The META Description tag goes between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags on your web page. It looks like this:

<meta name=”description” content=”This is a description of my site”>

When creating your META tags, you should be very descriptive, but don’t make it too long. Be sure to use keywords that are important to you in your description.

Keyword Weight

Most engines that read your meta tags will consider keywords more important if there are fewer overall keywords in the tag, and if they are closer to the beginning. Look at these two examples:

Site A:
<meta name=”description” content=”Fly Fishing in Alaska for King Salmon, Rainbow Trout Coho Salmon and much more”>

Site B:
<meta name=”description” content=”Fishing supplies and other products for the dedicated fisherman, including fly fishing”>

Of the two sites, if an engine reads the META tags, Site A will tend to do better for the key phrase ‘fly fishing’ than site B, because the term occupies more of the overall description than in site B, and because it is the first thing found in the description.

Keyword Lists in a Description

Repeating keywords is a big no-no. Many engines consider this spamming, and humans are unlikely to click on your listing if they see this. For example:

<meta name=”description” content=”Fishing, fly fishing, salmon, trout, yada yada yada”>

This is likely to get you ignored or banned.

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META Keywords

Telling Search Engines what you want them to do

The META Keywords tag on your web page is a way to tell search engines what keywords you want them to index you with. Sounds good, doesn’t it? The bad news is that while many search engines used to rely on META tags, more and more have abandoned this. However, some still use them, so you should certainly pay attention to them.

The META Keywords tag goes between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags on your web page. It looks like this:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”keyword1, keyword2, keyword3, etc”>

When creating your META tags, you should put all of the keywords and phrases that are important and relevant to your site in the list. Be sure to list the keywords and phrases in order of importance, as this shows the engines which words are more important to you.

Keyword Weight

Most engines that read your meta tags will consider keywords more important if there are fewer overall keywords in the tag. Look at these two examples:

Site A:
<meta name=”keywords” content=”fly fishing, fishing, alaska”>

Site B:
<meta name=”keywords” content=”fly fishing, fishing, alaska, bait, fisherman, tackle, poles, salmon”>

Of the two sites, if an engine reads the META tags, Site A will tend to do better for the key phrase ‘fly fishing’ than site B, because the term occupies more of the overall keyword list than in site B.

Keyword Repetition

Repeating keywords is a big no-no. Many engines consider this spamming. For example:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”fishing, fishing, fishing”>

This is likely to get you ignored or banned.

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