web design
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web design | Graphic Web Design |
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Engine Rank, SearchThere. I made E stand for search engine rank. Thank you, mister comma! If you haven't already read the search engine optimazition tips, you might want to start there. Please note that your search engine rank depends in part on the layout and content of your site, and in part on who links to you. We'll discuss the former; you're on your own for the latter. First off, robots like to read. Wait. Go back. I saw a hand in the back when I mentioned "robots". What are the robots I'm talking about? Well, you know C-3P0 and Will Robinson's buddy? They're nothing like them at all. "Robots" or "spiders" are just computer programs. I've written a very simple robot or two myself, for nefarious purposes that I shall not share with you. But search engines like Yahoo and Google and MSN have their own robots that scour the internet for web pages. They follow links all across the web -- hence the name "spider," I suppose -- and send back information. The information is processed, and they basically make a giant index of the internet. All clear? Okay, good. Now then. Robots like to read. Why? Because they can't look at a picture and say "Doggie!" like your two-year-old can. They will someday, they tell us -- crack teams are working on it as we speak, and will one day be able to emulate your child so that two-year-olds will become things of the past. That's why, when you're searching Google Images for "rubber mallet" you get all sorts of crap, only some of which has anything to do with a rubber mallet. It's because the robots have to trust the text around the images to guess at what the image contains. Do the robots actually understand the words they're reading? No. Not really. That's why your search results aren't always so great either. That's also why you can't just ask Google what the average rainfall of the Amazon Basin is. Presumably it's on a web page someplace that Google has read, but all Googlebot does is categorize the words used on that page and return the best matches for your query. (Someday, perhaps, we'll have truly intelligent artificial intelligences, and sites like AskJeeves.com will actually work. I like to think it'll be in my lifetime, but then I also like to think flying cars will be in my lifetime.) SO! Keeping in mind that robots like to read, what can you conclude?
Guess what. That's sorta true. But that's also why I put my NAME as a graphic, but the important words up there -- "web design" -- are text. #2 has the same argument, basically -- Flash movies automatically generate hidden code for robots that tells them what words are used inside the movie. Whoopie! How does the robot know you're not lying? It doesn't. So it's a safe bet the robot would rather read the words in the body of the page itself. #3 does not mean stuffing popular search terms like a certain pop star's name, or athlete's name, in your text. I'm not going to say any just in case I might get PUNISHED for it. Call me paranoid. But you should include terms that relate to your topic. Talking about the Wild West? Then "gunslinger", "sheriff", and "sun-down" might be some good choices, rather than "robber", "officer", and "sunset", respectively. #4 is a two-edged sword. Say your site is dedicated to Lilliputians. How many people know how to spell that properly, do you think? I even had to check, and I'm a pretty fantastic speller. (I was right, for the record.) So... If you're trying to get all the traffic for folks looking for information on Lilliputians, then you better spell it right. HOWEVER, if you find that the search term is just about impossible to compete for, you might consider building your site around a misspelling or two. Become the number one site or "liliputians" (note the single L), and get MORE traffic than if you were the #20 site for the correct spelling. As of this writing, there were 516 sites with the misspelling, and more than 10,000 with it right. Maybe more folks know how to spell it than I thought. |