Maxmillian*s Gold: The Basics of Search Engine Optimization and Attracting Customers

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THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SEARCH ENGINES

A report released in March of 2005 indicated that the search engines are being used between 2 to 3.5 billion times per day to find information online.

You can view that report here: http://thephantomwriters.com/2005-search-queries.html

If you run a business online, this information should be very important to your understanding of what it will take for you to succeed online.

Of course, the people using the search engines are on the hunt for some kind of specific information. At their favorite search engine, they type in their specific search query and hit Enter.

THE TOP SEARCH ENGINES

According to http://www.searchenginewatch.com/, from December of 2004, search specific search engine results were derived from:

Google - 35% Yahoo - 32% MSN - 16% AOL - 9% Excite - 4% AskJeeves - 2% Others - 2%

These results are consistent with other search engine statistics found on the Internet. Far and away Google and Yahoo are the top two search engines that deliver results, followed by MSN and AOL. As you can see from these results, 98% of all search engine users acquire their search results from the top 6 search engines.

THE IMPORTANCE OF SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

As an online business owner, it is always our goal to make sure that our site turns up in the top 20 search results for the keyword phrases that will put our websites in the path of our targeted customers.

It helps to be the site that your potential customers will reach when they are looking for your types of goods and services. As an online business owner, you must strive to reach these customers and to strike while your product or service is large in the minds of your potential clients.

You must remember, you are competing with thousands of other websites who want to serve the same customers that you want to serve. Yet, the average search engine user will only look at the first twenty results that the search engines give them.

Forget thinking about the *of 8,256 results* on the search results page of the search engine. This only shows you how steep the competition is for your chosen keywords and keyword phrases.

Page one is often *1-10 of 8,256 results* and page two is *11-20 of 8,256 results.* Most searchers will only look at page one and two, and then they will type in a new search keyword phrase to narrow the search more specifically.

THE BASICS OF SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

There are actually many methods that you can incorporate into your website design that will help draw additional traffic to your website through the search engine company websites. This is what is referred to as Search Engine Optimization. Following are some of the methods used to drive this traffic to your websites.

META TAGS

Many years ago, there was a movement afoot to provide search engine specific information on every web page. This tool is called Meta Tags.

For a time, there was a rise in the number of Meta Search Engines, but many of those have since fallen by the wayside.

There was so much abuse by website owners that many search engine companies and searchers realized that they could not trust the results being generated by the important Keyword and Description Meta tags.

Today, there are very few engines that use the full-range of Meta Tags in their search results. One such engine that does is the Denmark based search company: http://www.aeiwi.com/ According to the Alexa data, this is the 22nd largest search engine in terms of actual usage.

While the overall importance of Meta Tags has been diminished, several tags are still viable and important to the search engine companies. And, some of the smaller search engines still use the full range of available Meta Tags. If you decide to pursue some of the traffic available through some of the smaller search engines, then a good overall tutorial on Meta Tags can be found at:

http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/article.php/2167931

The only Meta Tags that have actually stood the test of time are as follows:

[meta name=*CONTENT-LANGUAGE* content=*En*] [meta name=*CONTENT-TYPE* content=*text/html*] [meta name=*RATING* content=*General*] [meta name=*ROBOTS* content=*index,follow*] [meta name=*EXPIRES* content=*Mon, 08 May 2006 19:58:02 GMT*] [meta name=*REVISIT-AFTER* content=*3 days*] [meta name=*MSSmartTagsPreventParsing* content=*TRUE*]

*Robots* is important to because it tells the search engine spiders whether or not they can spider the page they are viewing.

The *Expires* tag is only for web pages that contain *time-sensitive* data on them. For example, if your web page describes an event that will occur on May 8, 2006, then it does not make much sense to make the event information available past the event date. By using the *Expires* tag, you can tell the search engine spiders to remove the page from their database on your specified date.

Conversely, if you have a page that changes its content on a regular basis, then your *Revisit-After* Meta Tag can be extremely useful as well. It will tell the search engine spiders how often they should revisit your site to find new, updated information.

The *MSSmartTagsPreventParsing* is very important to most of us who are interested in using our websites for profit. In an upgrade of MS Internet Explorer a couple of years back, Microsoft built an additional tag into the coding. Unless the *MSSmartTagsPreventParsing* tag is set to TRUE, then Internet Explorer will place additional links on specific keywords inside of your pages.

This was actually pretty controversial when it came out because Microsoft is inserting links into our websites that we did not place there ourselves. They are in effect hijacking our web traffic.

TITLE TAGS - THE IMPORTANCE OF THE FIRST 65

The Title Tag is the specific HTML that places your page title at the very tip-top of your browser window. It is also harnessed by all of the search engines as the definitive title of the page being referenced.

Many people fail to include a solid and useful title tag for the page they have built. Yet, it is so very easy to do:

[TITLE]Good Title Tags Will Convince the Reader to Visit[/TITLE]

I still do include the Meta Title Tag religiously in all of my website pages. [META NAME=*title* CONTENT=*My Page Title*]

Most search engines only use the first 65 characters of the Title in their actual results. If you use a title of more than 65 characters, then you are generally wasting your time and file size.

PAGE DESCRIPTIONS - THE IMPORTANCE OF THE FIRST 138

We have learned that most search engines do not use the Description Meta Tag. Even still, the search engines need a description to place with your webpages.

The various search engines use different methods for acquiring a page description. Some still use the Description meta, so I use it anyway just to cover all of the search engine possibilities.

The search engines generally only use the first 138 characters of the decoded description to present to their readers. As such, the first 138 characters is the most valuable real estate on your webpage. These first 138 characters will often serve as the only reason someone decides to visit your webpage.

Some search companies grab any comment tags in the header of your pages. This is why we always include the comment tags on our pages that look like this:

[!-- Here is my page description again. --]

For those search companies that use neither of the above listed methods to acquire a description for your webpage, you should try to make sure that the first 138 characters of pure text on your webpage demonstrate a solid sales message to the search engine users.

OPTIMIZATION IS USUALLY JUST COVERING THE BASICS

In the end, our only goal is to bring as many potential visitors to your website as possible. And the way to do that is to provide your users the information they are searching for.

Be sure to provide the actual words in your pages that your clients are using to search the web, be sure you do it in a way that will put your site in the top 20 search results, and do it in a way that will actually attract the attention and mouse click of the person doing the search.

When you have accomplished these three very basic tasks, then you will not need to devote much more time to the construct of your website. Instead, you will be making enough money that you might just find yourself sitting on the beach over your weekends.

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