Search Engine Optimization

Optimizing Your Website for Search Engine Visibility

Creating a website is the first step to an online presence. Now your Customers and Clients need to be able to find you, usually through a search engine. Search Engine spiders endlessly read through the HTML code and, with complex algorithms, they process, tabulate and rank web pages. Each Search Engine has its own 'Rules of Play' — most give credit to or subtract from your overall score according to your use of Keywords; some begin at the bottom of the page and work up.

On this ever-shifting frontier, these suggestions may help increase your rankings:

• Devise a list of words that you expect a potential Customer to use to find your site. Make the list as specific and unique as possible. These are your Keywords.
  
  
• Include the Keywords in actual text of your Home page. Use Keywords like a fourth grade spelling list, combining them in sentences and titles.
  
  
• In order for a Search Engine spider to read and catalog the text, the words must be encoded on the page rather than part of a graphic image or a Flash element.
  
  
• List your Keywords In the metatags, only once and with no commas between them. That enables the spiders to assemble strings of words that you had not thought of putting together.
  
  
• Heighten the count of Keywords by including them in the 'alt tags' of your graphics.
  
  
• List your Company Name, Address, and Contact information in a footer at the bottom of each page. Also, provide a 'webmaster' link.
  
  
• Carefully word the metatag Title and Description of your webpage using your Keywords. These are listed when a viewer's search 'finds' your website. You may place your phone number in your Title, separated by hyphens.

  For more comprehensive information, please see