Search Engine Optimization

The question most frequently asked by clients is: What can you do as Web designers to get my Web site to rank higher in search engine results? The answer: Not very much.

Over the years, search engines have constantly worked on better ways to match search results with user search words. One of the first techniques was development of the META tag, a piece of code that was a string of words used to describe the content of the Web page. As technology developed, search engines such as Google have gotten smarter.

Instead of reading the META tag, which many times is inaccurate and misleading, they now scan and log the actual content of the Web page itself. Since search engines scan and log the content of your Web site, search engine optimization really means knowing how users might look for you and using those words and phrases throughout the content of your Web site.

For example, when you enter the words: 'Portland Oregon, Web Design' into the search engine Google, the search engine scans the actual content of the web pages looking for those words. Those sites who don't mention 'Portland Oregon' in the text of their web site will be listed towards the bottom of the search results. While those sites who do list 'Portland Oregon' along with 'Web Design' will be listed more towards the top.

Search engines also rank the content itself. Meaning the words 'Portland Oregon Web Design' that are used in a headline will rank higher than the same words used simply in the content.

What factor is most important to
search engines?

Here is the top guideline given by Google:

“…webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.”

You can read Google’s guidelines here:
http://www.google.com/technology/index.html

And find answers to many questions here:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=8458

Search engines reason that the more Web sites that link to yours, the more important your Web site must be. Therefore,the best way to rank higher in search engine results is to find other relevant Web sites for your business and industry and ask them to place a link to your Web site on theirs.

Search engine submission links:

Google: http://www.google.com/addurl/
Yahoo: http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
MSN: http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
Ask: http://www.ask.com/
Lycos: http://insite.lycos.com/
Dmoz: http://dmoz.org/add.html