Key Words and search Engines a primer.
Whilst swishmax does generate keywords for your html document you may wish to amend these keywords to properly reflect the values you wish to classify them. Here is a short tutorial where I'll explain keyword and Description meta tags
Intro:
Begin a discussion about keywords and most likely an argument will ensue about search engines. And keyword usage. Almost to the point that getting to the point of the information you need to know will be buried amongst a myriad of separate quasi related issues. Rather then
enter into the realm of topical nature. I'll focus on the basics for those just entering into the realm of keywords.
HTML
Basic
The visual display of content in a browser does not display all the data contained in an html document. Html documents contain a head section and a body section.
A far from adequate analysis is the head is the brains of an html document and the body is the physical representation of the document. In source view this is what a blank html document will commonly appear
Within the is where meta tags such as keywords and descriptions go generally they are placed below the title yet always before the closure of the Meta tagsare actually meta elements (as defined by the wc3)
The META element provides metadata such as a document's keywords,
description, and author. Any number of META elements may be contained in the HEAD
of a document
META's NAME attribute provides a property name while the CONTENT attribute gives the corresponding value. The CONTENT attribute value may contain text
and entities, but it may not contain HTML tags.
Within the head of your document should be a meta tag named Keywords. This is what a search engine robot will look at when classifying your page/site on a search engine. If the keywords are not present and a robot spiders your site/page it will not list the page without keywords, Keywords are how a search engine robot determines if your content is worthy of placement on a search engine(amongst other criteria) Description is often the supplement to keywords which describes the content which will be displayed in the search engine when a visitor uses a search engine to find the page:
Notice the keywords are simply selected words which one would use for classifying in a search engine while the description is two well formed sentences which explain what will be displayed on a given search engine. When you go through the submission process the keywords in your html document must match the keywords on your submission form as well as the descriptions must match
About
Keywords:
Most search engine submission forms prefer 20 keywords or less. Keywords are not case sensitive. Choosing your keywords should never be a guessing game. The keywords in your meta tag should also be represented in your html document. Remember the robot reads the meta tags then searches for the keywords in the document. If the keywords are not found then the robot may reject your submission. More on that later,,, for now focus on the keywords. Would someone use the keyword to find out more about the web site?
Keywords work best when:
- They are used in the description of your document
- They are used in the Title of your document
- They are used in the Description of your document
- They are used in the Body of your document.
- They are used in the domain name address of your document.
Obviously you can't use all the keywords in all of these instances. However each instance helps to retain the validity of
your keywords. Repeating keywords inside the meta tag is unwise. If the same keywords are repeated too often in the META element, some search engines will not index the document. Search engines typically only process the first 1000 characters of the keywords list. However Pluralities are allowable.
Imagine you are building a site for Bob's Flower Shop in Bangor Maine. Bob has a domain name thats' flowers-by-bob.biz That's a good start. There are plenty of florists named bob. quite a bit less that operate in Bangor Maine. If I have a sweety in Bangor and I want to send flowers to her, don't know about bob's shop I could just google my way to his site using two keywords bangor flowers he may not come up on the top of the listing but he'll be there if the keywords are in place.
So lets look at some possible keywords.
Sure we could go on about related keywords however as I stated earlier keywords should convey what the visitor is looking for.
Stick to your top 20 keywords, an oddball keyword Like "honey I wreaked the car" most likely won't be entered into a search engine form when seeking a florist. Your Keywords should be in your html document. If the keyword is not in the document do not place it in your keywords. If you use a keyword in another web page on the same site then use robot follow and make sure that page has the proper keyword usage.
About
Descriptions:
Descriptions are exactly that a description of your product or service. One of the worst things you can do is to use "the Best" or "Number 1" in your description or keyword. Search engines reject these as spam techniques. Some search engines will not list sites which pander to this technique others will force such listings to the bottom of page ranking. A site description should do just that. Describe what the site is about
To avoid being truncated by search engines, the description should be brief--no more than 200 characters.
The description tells the visitor what they need to know before clicking. You'll notice the content of the sentences has keywords in play Such as the Name of the company (domain names being what they are are often hard to attain using an actual company name.
About indexing content Tag
After the robot reads the keyword meta data it searches the content of the document to find references to the document.
Some older reference material may say that the robot meta tag
only works for a limited amount of search engines. This is dated information and no longer valid because All major search engines will spider/tunnel via the inclusion of a robots meta tag.
For further information on robots check out http://www.robotstxt.org
About Bots and Body content Much has been written about the usage of swf content and search engines. Googlebots (and a few others) Can index swf content. However, and read this carefully It can only search the _root Movie It can only search the first 10 frames It can only read dynamic text. If you have dynamic text In your first few frames containing the keywords that will be sufficent for google to verify them. However it may not be sufficent for other engines. Search engines have rules about keywords and the body of text. Robots only follow the rules of the search engine company such as a robot can figure out hiding text by making it the same color as your html document points off you wont get listed. There are other ways to fool the robot without having to resort to displaying all the content you provide in your swf in your html document as well. Deep linking simple linking to a .txt version of the same content.
Search engine dont's- Search engines like back buttons. Never auto foreward someone to a url which they cannot back(history) button out of. If they can't back button to the originating page from whence they came your site won't be listed end of story.
- Search engines ignore javascript functions. If you use your keyword in a script it will be ignored.
- Seach engines read font color size and background color
If your font size is considered too small (8pt or smaller) or matches your background color so the text is not visible to the visitor the search engine discounts that word and may deny submission/listing.
- Search engines have a hard time with frames they often cannot see the frameset pages nor read them because of the structure of framed pages. It's best to avoid framesets.
Search engine do's
- Search engines like link ins and link outs. One way to insure a higher page ranking is to link out to related materials even if it's on a page that the search engine is the only visitor of.
(make sure that regular visitors have a link back to your main or index page if you use this technique)
-
Search engines don't understand css, they do is read what's in the div. A common trick to fool a search engine is to place your content in a div with a background image that is the same color as your text. The text will be hidden from the visitor however the robot will see the text and ignore the background image. Another common trick is to use a hidden div with the content expressed as html yet not visible to the browser. If an editor inspects a site and the content is displayed in swf he most likely won't search the css coding.
Search Engines General
With robots oddly one does not have to submit to a search engine to be listed on the search engine. If enough high profile sites already link to your site the bots will follow the link to your door so to speak. Then read the keywords the description and the content of your text. If you aren't getting the his from these larger sites then don't expect a bot to come out of the blue and list your site. Search Engine submission forms are always the best way to have your site submitted.
Meta Crawlers are search engines that use other search engines gathering links. To a certain extent almost almost all search engines will search other search engine databases for links. If your listed on yahoo or google you may find the site listed on a number of other search engines eventually. Once again however it is still wisest to submit to the major search engines directly.
All search engine companies have human editors. Who control
what content can be allowed and not be allowed for various reasons. DMOZ Oddly does not use robots. They rely on submission and then editors visit the site if the editor is sufficently pleased with the content representing the keywords/description then it becomes listed. Because of this although it may not be the most widely used search engine it is the most respected.
Submission Costs
There are several ways to submit your website to a search engine.
There are companies who will handle this for a fee. Before you pay money for a 3rd party agent to submit a search engine you should check and recheck it's credentials. You should not have to pay a fee to a 3rd party or a search engine for site submission however there can be times when it is to your advantage that you do so.
Providers Tools Many free and paid hosting providers have sumbission tools which can speed the process of site submission to major search engines. With paid providers it is usually accessable via the CPanel the instructions are clear and easy to follow just have a source view of your html documents available
Where to submit manually.
Google
Yahoo
DMOZ
MSN
Happy submissions and many happy indexings.
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