Internet Business Tips and Notes

For the last two years I have been successfully operating several web sites. I was fortunate in that I developed a process to get the sites listed in the search engines very quickly. I have been able to use this same method to get a few select keywords to rank very high, which allows the rest of the site enjoy the buoyancy effect of having a high ranking keyword. In the event you have not heard of the buoyancy effect, it is the concept that one or two keywords ranking well will lift the rest of the site in the search engine rankings.

Before launching a new site I generally like to review a handful of concepts with the design team. I always check for the use of H1 and H2 tags on the primary pages of the site. To help the search engine spiders understand the theme of the site, the tags become important because they always get crawled first. The search engines can easily pick up the theme of the site from the tags when they are used properly and point traffic towards the site when it encounters a common keyword request.

I look for anchor text being used in the text on the home page. I have helped many website owners to achieve better rankings by having them remove images where the important message of the site, what it is all about, is embedded in the image. The simple fact is that, while it may look more attractive to the user, the search engines cannot read images and pull text away from the image, so it is not worthwhile to put the important message of the site in the image. I recommend using a smaller image and having the text be in a prominent position so that the user can click and go instantly to the point of interest.

I like to have a page contained in the site for each keyword being used. The search engines like to be able to specifically go to pages that are called the same as the keyword they are targeting. A page written for a wedding photographer should contain anchor text on the home page for a wedding photographer leading them to a page in the site of the same name. The search engines will know exactly what to do with that link and can quickly give it the right theme to work with.

I then move my efforts to looking for dashes and underscores in naming conventions. There are many solid examples of pages indexing better using dashes and not underscores in their name. I have no clue as to why this is but it has been proven so we should all follow the rule. If all else is equal, two pages named search-engine.htm and search_engine.htm will not rank the same. There have been lots of studies done to support this theory so I always remove the underscores from all file and page names.

Finally, a great question to ask yourself is what the search engines think the theme of your site is. The Google Keyword Tool is one of the best ways to find out the theme of the site from a spiders perspective. You will enjoy finding out what the search engine thinks your site is about by reviewing the keywords that it brings back to you. Many people are surprised to find out that what they intended the site to be about is not at all what the search engines believe it is about so we go about fixing the issue. I am usually able to quickly remedy the situation by highlighting keywords through H2 tags and by adding no follow rules to the links that are inside of the site. The mismatch situation can easily be turned around if the search engines do not agree with the theme of your site.

Tags: site promotion