To Increase Traffic from Search Engines

Search engines scour the Internet to identify Web sites that are relevant to their users’ queries. They do this not only by reviewing pages’ visible content, but also by taking into account content hidden in HTML tags, e.g., META elements and image identifiers. By making a few small changes to your Web site’s HTML, you can significantly increase its chances of surfacing highly in users’ search results.

To find a great example of search-engine optimization, we didn’t have to look farther than the Share Helpful Tips section of the ADB. We had spent about five minutes searching when Mike Lepore, creator and Webmaster of Crimsonbird.com, flew into view. He had provided helpful tips to other Associates for a long time, so we sat down and asked him to identify some of the key practices that could help Associates who wanted to improve their search-engine placements. Here’s what we found out:

• Use META tags, which appear at the top of your HTML documents. They can either be hand-coded or inserted by most HTML editors. They allow you to precisely describe certain elements of your page.
• Try to begin each Web page with phrases relevant to the page’s content. Avoid starting with a lot of navigation elements or advertisements that don’t contain keywords relevant to the page’s major topic.
• Remember that no single tactic works for all search engines. Each one has its own way of ranking Web sites. For example, Google notes the “description” Meta tag and ignores the “keywords” one, while others take both into account.
• First and foremost, create smart content. Mike provides lengthy, information-packed reviews of books that he’s read which gives his visitors a reason to come back often. Check out his review of here to see a great example of good content.

Optimize each page separately. Search engines don’t rank Web sites in their entirety, instead ranking each page individually. For example, even if your site mainly focuses on business software, if you have a children’s software page, be sure to include relevant keywords to that topic.