How to give search engines what they want

July 9, 2008 by Collin LaHay
Filed under: Guest Post 

This post was guest written by Salwa, who blogs over at Blogriffic.com

Search engines were created for a purpose – to give people fast access to information. Individuals, who are trying to place products such as websites, writing, and other content on the internet, need to follow certain guidelines when placing information on the internet. The two primary search engines today are Yahoo and Google. There are also thousands of smaller directories on the internet so that content can be viewed.

When creating content for the internet, the information must be specific enough for search engines to pick up. For instance, a website design and its content (meaning text) must be developed to an extent that keyword phrases and words are used so that search engines can narrow in on specific items. Website owners make money by getting their content to as many people as possible; therefore, specific content is crucial. Search engines only pick up text, not graphics, etc. So while cool graphics might attract people, the people won’t find the site without proper wording. Picking a good domain name can be the right start to attracting people to your site.

Picking the right domain server is also important. Search engines are fickle creatures, and if IP addresses change frequently, search engines are less likely to pick up your content. The idea is to use a domain server that gives your site one specific IP address that can be logged. Also, domain servers that promote spam or any other type of pop ups, etc. search engines try to filter those out. Also making sure you have encoded your HTML tags properly is important so that search engines can pick up the proper text. A little trick that novice website creators do is to not put labels on their pictures. A lot of search engines catalogue those labels, and can be found in searches.

The next important detail is to register your website or content with the major search engine directories. There are companies that will do this for a fee, or you can register them yourself, most of the time without a fee required. Registering your domain ensures that it will be picked up on search engines. An important step in the process of making sure search engines pick up your material is linking to other sites. A website creator/promoter wants his website content linked on as many different sites as possible. Also, linking other people’s content to your site is a good way for people to access your website and keywords to be picked up on by search engines.

Using search engines to advance your business, website or other enterprises is a central component in making it a success. Give the search engines what they want, and in a short amount of time, your site could be logging thousands of hits a day, and score high in the search engine rankings. Using search engines effectively can make a small website or content into a world wide venture. It’s all I giving the search engines what they want.

Comments

5 Comments on How to give search engines what they want

  1. Spanish Classes on Wed, 9th Jul 2008 9:33 pm

    2. Collin,

    I’ve always liked your blog because it gave practical seo advice that was just outside of the basics and creative. I know that the basics are important but this guest post was rather poor.

    I also understand that you need to get others building content on your site for you but that was a huge step down from what I’m used to on your site.

  2. The Net Fool on Thu, 10th Jul 2008 8:30 pm

    3. Solid advice here. A bit of a generalization, but I typically enjoy these types of posts because it can give you a nice refresher course on the basics of getting your content to be well-read and successful.

  3. One Year Millionaire on Fri, 11th Jul 2008 10:03 am

    4. This is pretty basic stuff for any SEO beginner… one thing I think I would mention is that I have a few keywords that rank on the first page of yahoo and yet they are on the 3rd page of google… and yahoo brings very few visitors for those keywords and google brings a lot… so ranking high in yahoo shouldn’t be necessary.

  4. David from PPC on Tue, 15th Jul 2008 12:57 am

    5. Pretty basic, entry level stuff that will appeal to beginners. Have to agree with One Year Millionaire when comparing Yahoo traffic to Google traffic. It seems that Yahoo’s traffic figures aren’t very accurate when one looks at what figures analytics gives one!

  5. Sacramento Weddings on Tue, 15th Jul 2008 6:30 pm

    6. A good refresher course indeed, but should give a couple of FREE diagnostic tools that are available: “Website Grader” from Hubspot.com (www.websitegrader.com) and Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) (www.google.com/webmasters/tools). Using both of these sources, I was able to increase my SEO at a great price: NOTHING!

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