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Generally speaking the more practical and interesting the content, the more successful a Web site will be. After all, one of the main reasons people access the Internet is for information.
Providing quality information means that users are happy. And happy users will bookmark your site and come back for more.
Make sure your site is useful, a simple yet often misunderstood concept.
Most major search engines index every word on your page, yet another reason content is so important in getting visitors to your site.
Who? What? When? Where? Why?
Make sure your Web site answers these 5 questions. Leaving any one question out could leave a user partially confused. If your site doesn't say what it is about, then how is the user supposed to know?
Teach Your Users
By teaching the user about your product, you may generate more interest in your product.
Know Your Audience
Who are you trying to reach? Create content with them in mind. If you are using a lot of jargon, be aware that this narrows your audience. If you are okay with that, then continue. But if you don't want to limit your audience, consider defining some of the jargon to broaden your audience.
Keep Adding New Content
Adding new content gives visitors a sense of freshness to your site and keeps them coming back for the new content. A stagnant site does not entice visitors to come back. New content creates a sense of urgency and creates a need for visitors to come back. Think about it, would you buy a newspaper if it kept repeating the same news day in and day out?
Create content one page at a time. While a really successful site may have fifty to a hundred pages, start small and keep adding quality content. It takes time, but once you develop some momentum, more and more people will visit.
Unique Content
If you are the only one on the Internet with information about your hometown's annual mullet festival, you are bound to get noticed. If you can create it, odds are someone else is looking for it. Don't rewrite what is already out there. You need to differentiate yourself from the hundreds of competitors; you need to develop compelling content, to draw the world to your site.
Free Content
After all this, if you find that you still have little to no content, try some free content. Simply visit any search engine and type in the words "free <insert your topic here> content." And viola, free content for you. (Note: Do not plagiarize or steal copyrighted content.)
Can't write? Ask some regulars in a similar news group to write a short article for you and send you a photo. They will be happy to see their name in print, and you will get an article.
Sources
Web Marketing Where Content is King by Ralph F. Wilson, Web Marketing Today, Issue 26, December 12, 1996
Good Content: The Key to Search Engine Ranking by Daria Goetsch, January 17, 2003
Content is king by David Callan
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USING META TAGS
Meta Tags are those that list important information about the content of a Web page. Although some search engines no longer use meta tags to categorize and rank Web pages, some still do. These tags need to be placed in the <head> section of a HTML document.
Most major search engines index every word on your page and then compare those to your meta tags. So both content and meta tags are important in getting visitors to your site.
<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="descriptive paragraph here about your site">
<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="keywords that describe your site here">
<META NAME="AUTHOR" CONTENT="Your Name Here">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="CHARSET" CONTENT="text/html; CHARSET=iso-8859-1">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="CONTENT-TYPE" CONTENT="text/html; CHARSET=iso-8859-1">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="CONTENT-LANGUAGE" CONTENT="en-US">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="LANGUAGE" CONTENT="English">
Note: if language is not English, then replace "en-US" with the correct code, found here http://xml.coverpages.org/iso639a.html
Make the Web page <TITLE> self-sufficient, informative, and as short as possible. It not only will be displayed as the name of the browser window, it also will be saved and displayed when others bookmark the page. It may also show up in tiny print at the top left corner when viewers print the page.
Search engines have specific guidelines for most of these tags. Excessive repeating of keywords is considered "spamming" by some search engines, which may result in lower rankings. Here are some suggestions to follow to keep your tags within the guidelines:
| <TITLE> |
15 to 20 words |
| <META name="description"> |
100 to 200 characters
Keep the description human readable, not just a list of keywords |
<META name="keywords">
|
200 to 400 characters
Don't repeat key phrases
Don't repeat any individual word more than 3 times (don't worry about "noise" words such as: the, in, a, and)
Use commas, but don't place a space after it (this extra space will be counted in your total characters) |
It is also a good idea to reemphasize keywords (or different combinations of keywords) in your first paragraph. Search engines looks at the content of your pages too!
Also consider using commonly misspelled words in your keyword list.
Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool - Type in a search word and get other suggested terms you may not have considered. Also tells you how many times that term was searched for last month on Overture
Word Tracker - Free keyword report
SelfPromotion.com - For more information on how to get listed with search engines
Website Promotion by addpro.com - More tips to increase site traffic
Search Engine Watch - Provides tips and information about searching the Web, analysis of the search engine industry and ways to improve the ability to be found in search engines
Search Engine Optimization and No-No's Site Redesign - By Mike Banks Valentine, October 1, 2004
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SUBMIT YOUR SITE TO SEARCH ENGINES
Here are some good Web sites to submit your URL to after you have chosen the proper meta tags, but be patient, most search engines take months or more to update thier listings.
addpro - Submits your site to these search engines: Abacho, FindOnce, Splatsearch, Acoon, Fybersearch, Surfgopher, Aewi, Google, Subjex, Cipinet, Jayde, Walhello, Entireweb, MSN, WotBox, ExactSeek, ScrubTheWeb, and Searchit
Search Engine Submission & Optimization
dmoz open directory project - The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.
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All information compiled and researched by Katie Kleinman (Miller), last updated October 24, 2006. Sources are given when available. |
