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The Basic Principle
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There are two types of search engine: the deep engine, like Alta
Vista and Infoseek, which sends out a robot to your site and saves the
info from your page itself, and then there's the standard engine
(also known as "directory") which doesn't use any info from your page,
only the info which you give it by way of an online submission form. The
most important of all search engines is Yahoo! and it's absolutely vital
to take extreme care when you submit to this one.
Building A Keyword List
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Before you touch anything, you have to decide which words are best suited
to the topic of your site. Think carefully because the key is to match
the words your potential visitors are likely to type into a search engine.
Users tend to be fairly general with their initial searches, then they
narrow it down. So, if you have a pet shop the keyword 'pets' is going
to be more powerful than 'dogs'.
You can choose between a short, powerful keyword list which
is likely to put you high up but with only a limited number of words, or
you can have a long list which will put you slightly lower, but with a
broad spectrum of keywords.
Now that you've got your list, here's what to do with it...
Tips On Keywords And Descriptions
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Describe your Web site, not your company. The name of the
game is getting Web site visitors. Once they've arrived you can talk to
your heart's content about your annual turnover or whatever.
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Empathise with your users. Think what they might be searching for,
which may not even be something you're actually selling but may be related
to something you're selling. The user may thank you for selling them something
better. The keywords are more important than the facts!
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Test your keywords. Search for each one on any search engine and
then examine the top few Web sites to see if there are any other keywords
you might like to add to your list.
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Plurals: always use the plurals of keywords. A user will search
for 'pet' or 'pets'. Your keyword 'pets' will match in both cases.
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Common words: don't use words like 'web', 'internet', 'services'
- if you think one of your words might be a common one, test it on Alta
Vista. If the response is something like:
ignored 19,152,057 services
then don't use that keyword!
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Keyword phrases: your keywords don't have to be one word. Users
often search for well-known phrases like 'web site promotion'. If your
topic has a natural phrase like this, use the words together as one keyword
phrase - in your META tag (enclose all 3 words between two commas), TITLE
and even URL.
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