Page Titles.
Most search engines rank the information in the title of a
document higher than the information found in the body of a
document. Hence, it is important that a descriptive title be
provided for each document. For example, if this document
were placed on the Web, either one of the following titles
below would describe this document. However, the longer
title not only tells the user exactly what to expect when this
document is viewed, but since it contains more keywords, it
would also more likely be retrieved and then viewed.
<title> Traffic-Building Strategies </title>
Or
<title> Traffic-Building Strategies For Web Sites: Preparing Documents for Optimal Indexing and Implementing an On-going Awareness Building Campaign </title>
Meta Descriptions and Keywords.
Many search engines display the Meta description as part of
the results page. If a Meta description is not provided, many
search engines typically display the first 50-70 words of a
document. Unfortunately, the header of a document might
only contain information about the author and hence it would
less likely be viewed. By providing a Meta description, a
search engine will more likely display a summary of the
document rather than simply the first few sentences. Below is
an example of a Meta description for this document.
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Traffic- building strategies for Web sites involve a combination of knowing how to prepare documents for optimal indexing and implementing an ongoing awareness building campaign.">
Meta Keywords are also an important part of a Web page. A good set of keywords should cover the topics mentioned in the document. Below is an example of Meta keywords for this document.
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="marketing, awareness building, campaign, reciprocal links, search engines, Web site, promotion">
Headings.
Many search engines also use headings (i.e., <h1> through
<h6>) to rank the relevance of a document for a particular
query. They assume that words in headings are more
important than the words in text. Hence, when possible, place
main concepts and ideas into HTML heading tags.
JavaScript and VBScript.
While incorporating JavaScript and VBScript code into a
document can really make it come to life, it is important to
realize that most search engines assign higher relevancy to
information that appears towards the top of a document. If
JavaScript and VBScript code is located towards the top of the
document, then this source code can actually lower the
relevancy of the remaining words in the document. Hence
when possible, locate JavaScript and VBScript towards the
bottom of a document.
Frames.
Documents formatted using frames typically do not rank as
well in search engines compared to non-framed versions of the
same information. One reason is because some of the major
search engines fail to completely index framed pages, since
frames are in affect a composite of multiple pages. It is
recommended that if you must use frames, that you utilize the
<noframes> tag as shown in Figure 1. This allows the spider
for a search engine to traverse through all the information.
The <noframes> tag also enables information to be displayed
in browsers that do not support frames. The second reason
why documents formatted using frames do not rank well in
search engines is because of the "dilution effect". To a search
engine, each window within a framed document appears as its
own separate document. Hence, if a document is formatted
using two frames, it is possible that half of the relevant
keywords appear in one document and the other half appear in
the second document. The net result is the information as a
whole is not weighted as heavily.
|
<html> <head> <title> Traffic-Building Strategies ... </title> </head> <frameset rows="130,*"> <frame src="document1.html"> <frame src="document2.html" name="main-window"> <noframes> <body> Place information from document1 and document2 here. </body> </noframes> </frameset> </html> |
|
|
Figure 1: Illustrates how the special tag <noframes> can be incorporated into a document. |
Document Analysis and Verification.
To help analyze and verify that documents have been properly
formatted, you may want to consider using online software
applications such as Meta Medic (HREF 2) or HTML Doctor
(HREF 3). Both of these applications allow you to check a
small number of documents for free. With Meta Medic, the
user enters a URL, and then Meta Medic performs an analysis
of the information in the document. It then generates a report
describing how search engines would process the meta
information and text for that document. It even illustrates how
the document would be displayed on a search results page for
the major search engines. Shown below is the HotBot search
engine simulation that Meta Medic generated for this
document.
There are many services available that will submit your Web site to thousands of submission sites all at once. Examples include: SubmitURL (HREF 4) and Traffic Seeker (HREF 5). While these services help your Web site get listed in the major search engines and some of the major directories, they fail to get links from many of the other valuable outlets. To get the maximum number of visitors to a Web site requires that first a careful examination of the content on a site be performed. Once this has been completed, thorough research must be performed to carefully locate outlets that are a perfect match for the content. For example, the webmaster for Northeastern State University (NSU) would want to periodically visit the Web sites for every high school and two year college in the state of Oklahoma and the surrounding states verifying or requesting links from their Web sites. Typically you will also find that a Web site is far more than its homepage URL. Many sites have features and subpages that are themselves marketable. For example, the link to the document "Job openings" found on the NSU homepage should also be aggressively marketed. When done correctly, Web site promotion is a challenging and time-consuming process. You will quickly find that no two Web site awareness building campaigns are the same.
Keep Visitors Coming Back.
As part of an ongoing awareness building campaign, it is
important to keep visitors coming back to your Web site time
after time. Below are a few techniques used to repeatedly lure
visitors back to a Web site.
Negotiate Reciprocal Links.
Negotiating reciprocal links with other Web sites should be
considered. By offering links to other related sites, you may
find that you have added an increased value to your site, and
consequently, there would be a greater tendency for a visitor
to bookmark your site for future reference. However, it
probably should be mentioned that reciprocal links are a bad
idea if your product or service does not stand up against your
competitors.
Verify And Track Marketing Campaign.
Many of the major search engines allow you to determine
whether or not your Web site has been indexed by their
spiders. For example, to determine if a Web site has been
indexed by HotBot, you can use HotBot's Check URL
application (HREF 6). This application verifies if a URL has
been indexed in HotBot's database. For the search engine
AltaVista, simply enter the keyword "link:" in the search field
followed by a URL. It will then return a listing of all the
documents that are hyperlinked to the URL entered in the
search field. This feature can be very beneficial to help
analyze the effectiveness of a Web site awareness building
campaign. For after an awareness building campaign has
been started, you should noticed a marked increase in the
number of links to your Web site.