Search Engine Optimization - Spam vs Ham
Spam
If you look at the competition around here, you might notice some patterns. Excessive repeating of the words Bradenton, Sarasota, Web, and Design. Some people have gone through such great lengths to ensure every part of their website contains those four words as many times as possible, including littering the <title> tag.
How many entries do you see with titles such as "Sarasota Bradenton Tampa Web Developer and Designer"? The title tag is supposed to contain relevant information, such as, the name of your company, your site, and what you do, not endless miles of broad search terms.
While it is important to make good usage of your most important keywords, it is even more important to understand how to use them!
Search engines rank pages based on content. They determin how relevant the content is in conjunction with the keywords used in the search query. Google however, does things a little differently. When you launch a site, google literally places your site in an "aging filter" - a state in which your site will not show up in the Search Engine Result Pages. This effect has also been referred to as the Google Sandbox Effect and it can take from 3 to 6 months for your site to start ranking.
In addition, Google places strong emphasis on what web sites link back to your own. Pages are therefore ranked based upon the relevance of your site's content and the amount of links to your site.
Before you pay good money for somebody to use unethical and down-right useless "optimization" techniques, think about what you are trying to accomplish.
Here is an actual example of search engine spam:
"Tampa web site design: MMK Tech Tampa Florida web site design: Clearwater web site design Florida web site design Tampa web site design website design internet design flash design Tampa web design Clearwater web site design Florida Tampa web site design Florida web design site designer internet marketing web marketing search engine optimization web graphic design"
This company claims to be able to perform search engine optimization, however their own website ranks extremely poor for the terms "Bradenton Web Design", "Sarasota Web Design", and especially "Tampa web design".
Ham
- The more accessible your web site is, the easier it will be for spiders to properly index the pages in your web site. Flash menus and poorly implemented graphical navigation systems are NOT accessible and will prevent your site from being indexed properly. If you insist upon having a flash navigation, or any otherwise inaccessible navigation system, create a sitemap.
- When you have good content in your site which contains relevant information, your rankings will go up.
- When the content in your meta tags consistently matches the page's content, and the content contains relevant keywords, your page will earn a higher ranking. This is much different than simply having a commented section of the html with hundreds of keywords, or even placing hundreds of keywords in the meta tags.
- In Google, the more unique web sites that link back to yours, the better your PageRank will be.
- The title and meta description tags are the most important tags in your page, use them to DESCRIBE your company, instead of repeating the same phrase over and over again.
Use accurate descriptions
Title should contain your business name, it's location, and in a few words, what your business does. Secondly, the description tag should have a nice medium-length text that clearly describes what services you provide, what goods you sell, or what in general you specialize in.
The content within the site should be clear and be relevant to the title and description of your site. This is not rocket science. Good results can be acheived without resorting to tag spamming.