One of the most difficult hurdles to overcome when your business has a web site is how well your web site ranks in the most commonly used Internet search engines. Well, for the designer, this is sometimes a tricky task.
You want the best result for your customer yet the market, both local and international, is flooded with the same product or service you are providing. What can we do to ensure that your web site reaches the first page of the major Internet search engines?
The Title of Your Web Site
The contents of the title of your web site is what you see at the very top of your browser. Pro Web Marketing will include keywords in your title that specifically describe your business, and if necessary, the location of your market. The title of your web site is also what people will see when they are viewing a listing on the search engines. So, the title needs to be kept clean, precise to the business, and professional looking to the viewer.
Description and Keyword Tags
Each web page on the Internet contains specific coding, which directs the browser to view your graphics and text. Every web page in your website should include a code for “Meta Description” and “Meta Keywords”. Meta Description is used to describe what your site is all about. For example, if your web site is for a vacation rental site, you would want your description to include the location of your rentals, surrounding cities, type of accommodations you offer, such as cabins, hotels, or condominiums, and so on. It should be brief yet specific, as this description will be displayed under the title of your web site in the search engines. Meta Keywords is used to tell the search engine that individual keywords a searcher types into the search engine is include in your web site. More importantly than keywords with most search engines is what is in the body of your text seen on your web site. We will get into the importance of that later on.
ALT Tags or Alternative Tags
Most web sites also include graphics and/or photographs within the web site. A search engine cannot see your image as part of your web site. However, if an ALT Tag is associated with your image, it helps the search engine find more keywords that associate your web site with what the searcher is looking for, as the ALT Tag is a text description of your image. For example, you have a picture of a 23 foot Maxum boat on your web site, but the name of your image is image.jpg. There are millions of image.jpg’s out there in the World Wide Web. You can narrow this down by creating an alternative tag (ALT Tag) name for your image by calling it “23 foot Maxum boat”. Now the search engine can see that there is a text description of the image, which is used to describe the image in text format versus image format and can be included in the search as text on your web site.
Text vs. No Text
Although Flash may be a beautiful way to display your web site page, most search engines, at this time, do not index them unless only part of the page includes a small flash presentation and the rest of the web site page is text oriented. Search engines index your web site page by the text presented on that page. The more descriptive you are about the product, services, and location of your business using text, the more apt you are to be indexed by a search engine when an individual types in their keywords.
At Pro Web Marketing, we strive to ensure that your web site is optimal for search engine indexing. However, we cannot guarantee that your web site will reach the No. 1 position, but we will try to position your web site as best we can against the vast amount of competition on the Internet.