How many times have you looked at a search results page and not
understood why your page isn't first?
Contrary to what some search engine consultants will tell you, there is
no magic bullet. Anyone who promises that your Web page will show
up first (or even early) on a search engine results page is selling
the ever-popular silicon snake oil.
While I have tend to prefer the search engines that determine
relevancy by Web page content (Lycos/AltaVista), I've been
making a point of adding META keywords to my files as I revise them.
Several different factors influence how a search results page is
built. These factors include:
That's a lot to consider. But you really don't need to know about
search engine algorithms when you're writing a Web page.
When you're writing a Web page, think:
Journalism 101
Back in the "olden days," we were told to think about
the following five issues of any news occurrence:
These five aspects of a news happening were supposed to
be worked into the first paragraph of an article.
No matter what fancy graphics or applications you're running,
a Web page with any kind of content at all can be easily
described in these terms.
So what's the very first thing to do when writing a Web page?
Always use title tags at the beginning of the page.
Probably every search engine or directory uses the contents of the
title tags. And this is your opening shot to add relevant content
to your page. So write a brief, descriptive title. Keep the title
reasonably short, but be sure it has something to do with the
Web page itself. A title like
Joe's Place
might be fine for a home page title, but if it's a business, add
a more information. Consider:
Joe's Place - Best Pizza in Peoria
By adding a more information, you've given the search engine
spiders a little more content to include in the catalog. Not to mention
the fact that since the contents of a title line appears at the top
of the browser window, you are helping people running multiple browsers
find your page again.
Once you've written the title, go on to add some
META keywords in the Web page head. If you haven't used
keywords before, try
META
Tag Builder for a good general description. There's information
on METAs in
Infoseek and
AltaVista.
Once you've finished with the title tags and the META keywords,
be sure to add headings to the file. Most search engines are
looking for h1...h2 and h1...h2. Use them appropriately
in your file.
Let's say you've written a Web page about Bill Clinton, so you've mentioned
his name a few times in the page. You've registered your
page with the major searchers, and it's in the various catalogs.
When a user starts a search and types in "bill clinton",
your page will probably be returned somewhere on the search results list.
Perhaps your site is titled "Musical Appearances by Bill Clinton",
and you discuss each time he's played the saxophone on television.
When a user enters a search on "clinton saxophone television", your
"Musical Appearances by Bill Clinton" page is more likely to appear
near the top of that search results page. However, if someone
is looking up "clinton foreign policy", your site is less likely
to be returned on that search results list.
It's very important to understand that the more frequently words
are found in Web pages, the more difficult it is
to find any particular page containing those frequently-used words.
If your company's name is "Computer Software Products", it's tough
for any search engine to return your page in response to those words being entered
because those words appear in tens of thousands of other Web pages.
Your page might appear as number 1,939 on the search results list of
3,000 Web pages that all three of those words appear in.
Try to use a unique combination of words, or combine a word and
a number. Avoid using words with punctuation in them, especially
hyphens (-) and question marks (?). Don't start a coined word with
a numeral. Some search engines have a real problem with
terms such as 3M, C++, or AT&T.
So, if search-results page position really matters to you, put the
title of your page in title tags at the top of your
Web page. Don't add extraneous text and keywords to the title.
Use h1..../h1 near the top of your home page
to restate the the page's title. It's fine to put an eye-catching
logo at the top of the page, but a logo means nothing to a search engine.
Consider using both a logo and the h1.../h1 heading.
If you want your Web page to be found using certain search words,
be sure to include those words near the beginning of the Web page.
If you don't want your site to be found using certain search words,
make sure they are not included on the Web page. The spider makes
determinations about relevant words based on how the words are
used on the page.
If you do not want your site to be cataloged at all, follow the
instructions on
robots.txt files.
The robots will ignore your site when this file is found.
If your home page has lots of graphics or Java scripts, if you use
page redirection, or if most of your site is contained in databases,
Perl and CGI, consider creating a text-only Web page that describes your
company/organization/Web site. A text-only page
is a huge help to people searching for
specific information, for the visually impaired who use
ASCII-to-voice systems and for people who use
text-based browsers like lynx. Put this text-only page
in your top-level directory, link it to the home page and
submit an ADD SITE request for the text-based page.
Let me repeat my earlier warning:
Some search engine consultants are trying to make a buck
by claiming they can always get you first on a search results page
if you buy their serves. This is bull of the highest order.
These people tend to find whatever weakness the search engine currently
has and exploit it (like
spammage). Many search engine developers do
not like seeing that their search engines are giving unfair
advantage to people who play stupid games rather than write
coherent pages.
I know of at least one company who bought the service of a search engine
consultant who didn't even have the folks do basic things
to their pages, like making sure there are h1s on them and
adding META keywords! Let basic common Web sense be your guide.
Return to the Search and Web Help Page.
© 1996-1999 Laurie D. T. Mann
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