Is your website friendly to search engines?

How search engines read your website

Search engines send out "spiders" throughout the web to look at websites and report back to them about what they found. Spiders are just automated programs without the ability to think or problem-solve. Your site needs to make it as easy as possible for these spiders so there is no mistake about what your website sells.

If you have an online toystore, you need to have the word "toys" mentioned somewhere in the text of your homepage, preferably several times. Then, when the spider looks at your website, it can say "Aha! This website sells toys!" If you want to really give the spider some good reading material, your homepage should not only use the word "toys," it should also mention what kind of toys you sell. For instance, a good opening paragraph in your homepage might be,

"Toys-N-Things toystore has a wide variety of teddy bears, action figures, dolls, teasets, model trains and just about any other toy your children might desire."

This gives several keywords to the spider: Toys-N-Things, toystore, teddy bears, action figures, dolls, teasets, model trains, toy, children. The spider will know to tell the search engine to list your site under those keywords.

Meta tags

To make it even easier for spiders, you can add invisible pieces of information into your website about what your site offers. These are called meta tags. A metatag gives spiders information such as the title of your website, a description of your services or products, and keywords for your site.

f a spider looks at your website and tells the search engine to list your site, your listing will show the title and description that you set in your meta tags. If your web page is missing these tags, the search engine might use the first couple of sentences in your text as a description, or it might decide not to list your website.

Alt Tags

You can also add what are called alt tags. These tags are an "alternative" to images. You may have seen them before when you hover your pointer over an image and some text appears. Alt tags are meant to be descriptions of an image so that if the image fails to load, the visitor can still see a description of what was meant to be there.

Alt tags can be a useful tool for reinforcing what the spider has already read in your meta tags and page text. For instance, you can create an alt tag for an image of a dollhouse on your site to read, "Complete children's dollhouse set with dolls, miniatures, and a storybook." This allows the spider to actually read your image!

How does your website stack up?

Now that you have created some spider-friendly content, meta tags and alt tags, does that mean you will be at the top of the search engines? The answer to this depends largely on how many competitors you have and how spider-friendly their websites are.

Want to know how your website stacks up to the competition? We can analyze your current website to determine what improvements need to be made in order for your site to place higher in the search engines. We can also help you determine what search terms you should target and, if necessary, help you develop a campaign for paid placement in Google and Overture. Contact us today for your website analysis.