Does Your Website Need Search Engine Placement?

Written by Dave Davies


Continued from page 1

The choosing ofrepparttar keywords to target is probablyrepparttar 127984 most crucial step ofrepparttar 127985 entire search engine optimization process. This will determinerepparttar 127986 success and/or failure of your promotions. Even if you attain allrepparttar 127987 top placements that were targeted, if you targetrepparttar 127988 wrong terms these rankings will produce little or no results. So how do you determine for yourself which keywords to target?

Without getting into anything too technical there are a couple of great resources out there to help you isolaterepparttar 127989 keywords that you should target.

The Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool Advantages – The Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool is free and produces a large number of results for related searches. Disadvantages – There are two main disadvantages torepparttar 127990 Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool in determining your keywords. The first of these is that it puts everything in terms onrepparttar 127991 singular and further will correct misspellings where you may want to know how many people searched for a misspelled term. If you run a shopping site that sells gifts you will not be able to determine whetherrepparttar 127992 main searched phrase was “gift” or “gifts”. The second major disadvantage torepparttar 127993 Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool is that it doesn’t give you alternative search phrases that are related but that you might not have thought to punch in (“presents” for example). Which brings us torepparttar 127994 second tool.

WordTracker Advantages – WordTracker addresses allrepparttar 127995 disadvantages noted aboutrepparttar 127996 Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool. It differentiates between singular and plural and will allow you to search for misspellings. Further, it searches a thesaurus and will make a number of suggestions for other terms you may not have thought of but which may be related to your industry. It will then analyzerepparttar 127997 variety of terms that you have searched and chosen and actually make recommendations on which keywords to target based onrepparttar 127998 number of competing pages andrepparttar 127999 specific search engine you are targeting. It will also give you a predicted number of searches per day for each phrase. Disadvantages – The only real disadvantage to WordTracker is that it has a cost. There is a free trial onrepparttar 128000 site which you can use thoughrepparttar 128001 results it produces are far lower in numbers and it does not give you information on all ofrepparttar 128002 major search engines. Certainly worth checking into even if you only tryrepparttar 128003 demo mode (not a download – this is an online resource).

So you now have a list of possible keyword phrases … now what? The next step is to determine whether you can compete with those currently holdingrepparttar 128004 top positions and, more importantly, whether it will be economical to do so. The first place to look when you are trying to determine this isrepparttar 128005 search engines themselves. Let’s assume for a second that you have determined that there are a good number of searches for your product and thatrepparttar 128006 main keyword phrase you would like to target is “acne cures”. The next step is to run a search for “acne cures”. Most people are interested primarily in their Google rankings and so you would run that search on Google producingrepparttar 128007 following results: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=acne+cures.

The site currently holdingrepparttar 128008 #4 position is www.approvedcures.com. Take a look atrepparttar 128009 site. There are two major things that you will first be looking for:

Is this a large site with a lot of content related torepparttar 128010 search phrase? In this caserepparttar 128011 answer is “yes”. They have a very large site and all of it is related torepparttar 128012 topicrepparttar 128013 search was for.

How many incoming links do they have? You will now want to find out what sort of link popularity you will be competing with. Links are notrepparttar 128014 end-all-be-all of search engine optimization, if fact it is just one of a large number of deciding factors, howeverrepparttar 128015 links help determine your Google PageRank and this PageRank is a final multiplier in determining your position. Becauserepparttar 128016 number of incoming links is easily determined it is something you should look into. To determinerepparttar 128017 number of links simply enter intorepparttar 128018 Google search bar “link:www.domain-in-question.com”. In this case it would be http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=link%3Awww.approvedcures.com . They do not have a large number of incoming links and thus, this is not going to be a significant factor in determining their ranking.

And Now You’re Ready For Search Engine Placement At this point you should have a pretty good idea as to whether search engine placement is a viable choice for your website promotions, which keywords you should target, and what competition you will be facing.

Assuming that your website needs to be optimized, you will now be faced withrepparttar 128019 choice of doing it yourself or hiring a search engine placement firm.

If you will be doing your own optimization I would highly recommend reading an article byrepparttar 128020 CEO of StepForth Search Engine Placement entitled “A 10 Minute Search Engine Optimization”. It can be found onrepparttar 128021 StepForth website at http://news.stepforth.com/2003-news en-minute-optimization.shtml.

If you will be hiring on a search engine placement firm I would recommend first submitting your site for a free website review off of our homepage at http://www.stepforth.com. There is no obligation and it will give you a very good idea of what areas need to be addressed.

Dave Davies is the marketing manager for StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc. Visit them online at http://www.stepforth.com or email him at dave@stepforth.com.


Meta Tags- What Are They and Which Search Engines Use Them?

Written by Richard Zwicky


Continued from page 1

Even if you ensure you have completely relevant Meta Tags, some search engines will still ignore them. But better they ignore them, than they ignore your whole site because they suspect something is less than above board. Never hope that having Meta Tags will makerepparttar difference in allrepparttar 127983 search engines; nothing is a substitute for good content. But in cases whererepparttar 127984 engine depends on that content, it may berepparttar 127985 only thing that does work for your site.

So How To Use The Meta Tags? Meta tags should always be placed inrepparttar 127986 area of an HTML document. This starts just afterrepparttar 127987 tag, and ends immediately beforerepparttar 127988 tag. Here’s howrepparttar 127989 most basic set should look:

Search Engine Optimization Software - Metamend< itle> <meta name="description" content="Metamend search engine optimization ...."> <meta name="keywords" content="search engine optimization marketing promotion software ..."> <meta name="robots" content="index,follow"> Always make sure that your meta tags do not have any line breaks, otherwise<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 127990"> search engines will just see bad code and ignore them. You should also avoid use of capitals in your code (html5 standard) as well as repetition of terms within<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 127991"> keywords tag.<p>What Goes Into a Meta Tag? For<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 127992"> Description tag: <meta name="description" content="a description of that specific web page">; Many search engines will display this summary along with<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 127993"> title of your page in their search results. Keep this reasonably short, concise and to<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 127994"> point, but make sure that it’s an appropriate reflection of your site content.<p>For<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 127995"> keyword tag; <meta name="keywords" content="a list of key words or terms about<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 127996"> page"><p>Keywords represent<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 127997"> key terms that someone might enter into a search engine. Choose only relevant keywords. If<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 127998"> terms are going to appear in your keywords tag, they must appear in<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 127999"> content of your site, or be a synonym to a term on your site. Most search engines compare your meta content with what is actually on your page, and if it doesn’t match, your web site can get penalized, and suffer in search results.<p>for<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 128000"> Robots tag <meta name="robots" content="index,follow">;Many web pages have this tag wrong. An example of<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 128001"> wrong usage is content="index, follow, all" - wrong because some spiders can't handle spaces between<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 128002"> words in<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 128003"> tag or<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 128004"> word "all". Most engines by default assume that you want a web page to be indexed and links followed, so using<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 128005"> wrong syntax can actually result in<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 128006"> spider coming to<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 128007"> wrong conclusion and penalizing, or worse, ignoring<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 128008"> page outright. If by chance you do not want your links followed, or<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 128009"> page not indexed, then you would substitute "noindex" and or "nofollow" into<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 128010"> tag.<p>With<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 128011"> Internet growing at a rate of over 8,000,000 new pages per day, and<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 128012"> search engines adding a fraction of that number, Meta Tags are a common standard which can reasonably ensure a measure of proper categorization for a web site. So, always ensure that you cover all<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 128013"> bases, and use completely relevant terms in properly structured Meta Tags. Using tags properly will pay dividends in<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 128014"> short and long term. After all, using them properly only helps<IMG height=12 src="/the2.jpg" alt="repparttar 128015"> search engines, which means they will send you more qualified traffic - customers. <br><img src="images/ata.gif"><br> <p>Richard Zwicky is a founder and the CEO of Metamend Software & Design Ltd., www.metamend.com, a Victoria B.C. based firm whose cutting edge Search Engine Optimization software is recognized as the world leader in its field. Employing a staff of 10, the firm's business comes from around the world, with clients from every continent. Most recently the company was recognized for their geo-locational, or GIS, along with their phraseological and context sensitive search technologies. <br><br><br></font></td><!-- google_ad_section_end --></tr><tr><td>    <a class="mlink" href="Does_Your_Website_Need_Search_Engine_Placement-27984.htm"><</a>Back to Page 1</td></tr></table><script type="text/javascript"><!-- google_ad_client = "pub-5766870852072819"; google_ad_width = 728; google_ad_height = 90; google_ad_format = "728x90_as"; google_ad_channel ="8831454965"; google_color_border = "CFB9A1"; google_color_bg = "CFB9A1"; google_color_link = "000000"; google_color_url = "431B02"; google_color_text = "431B02"; //--></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"> </script> </td> </tr> </table> <table width="770" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td> </td> </tr> <tr> <td height="48" align="center" background="images/bg_nav_bottm.jpg"><span class="style3">ImproveHomeLife.com © 2005<br> <a href="terms.html" rel="nofollow">Terms of Use</a></span></td> </tr> </table></td> </tr> </table> <script type="text/javascript"> var HASH_ESCAPED="%23"; function TrackIt(adUnit){ if (window.status) { var adDomain = escape(window.status.substring(6)); var pyPage = document.location.pathname; var params = document.location.search; var hasAnchor = params.lastIndexOf(HASH_ESCAPED)!= -1; params = hasAnchor? 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