SEO Tips- The 5 Critical Elements Search Engines Can “See” On Your Website
by Bill Parlaman
Filed under Bill's Blog, SEO Tips
So as you and I go through our little mini lessons on how search engines work, let’s talk about what the search engines can actually “see” on your web pages.
As I’ve mentioned before, search engine spiders are basically automated robots (software programs).
These spiders crawl billions of web pages every day, analyzing the content and organizing the information into huge databases ready to respond to your next search request.
And by the way…this is done in less than a second!
Amazing as this is, search engine spiders have limitations and can only “read” certain aspects of a web page.
It’s important to understand what a search engine spider can “see” when planning your SEO strategies because these are the areas you’ll want to concentrate on.
So without any further ado, Here are the 5 Critical areas search engine crawlers can “see,” and how leverage this information for your SEO campaigns.
1.HTML Code- HTML stands for “Hyper Text Mark Up Language” and it’s the code used to build and structure most websites. The search engine crawlers ignore portions of the code having nothing to do with written content.
Search engines look for “normal text” ( Otherwise known as web page content) found in the code. The spiders understand how to find this text based on the “tags” used by the webmaster.
These tags tell the search engines what content is important and what they can ignore. Click the link to read my previous article on how HTML website structure improves your SEO.
2.Title Tags-I’ve shared with you the importance of using title tags as an SEO strategy before. It’s important to list your keyword early in the tag and not use more than 9 words in your tag. Click the link to read my previous article on how to leverage title tags as an SEO strategy.
3.Meta Keywords-Meta keywords are lists of keywords you want your page to rank for.
Unfortunately, web spammers- ( Folks who attempt to “trick” the search engines through manipulation) damaged the search engine optimization value of this tag years ago so it’s not as powerful as it used to be.
It does not appear Google uses this tag at all any more but Yahoo and Bing ( formerly MSN) still show it some love. Don’t go overboard with your meta keywords. Maybe 3 or 4 tops.
4.Meta Description Tag-The search engines read the meta description tag of your website but it doesn’t appear to influence your search engine rankings.
What the search engines use the meta description tag for is to show the description of your website in the search results page.
So even though the meta description does not affect your SEO rankings, it’s still a very powerful tool because a compelling meta description will get more people clicking through to your site.
Click the link to read the article I wrote on writing meta description tags as an SEO strategy.
5.Alt attribute for images-The alt attribute ( sometime called an image tag) is a HTML tag used by webmasters to add a text description to pictures since search engines can not read images.
If an image is using an alt tag you can usually see this by hovering your mouse pointer over the image. You’ll notice each of the images I’ve included in this post uses alt text.
Alt attributes were originally created to assist hearing impaired internet users who could not view images on a web page. These folks can surf the Internet using a screen reader program.
When the screen reader reaches an image it reads aloud the description of the image ( pretty amazing huh?) Much like the meta keyword tag, this attribute can be abused by “stuffing” too many keywords in the tag.
All you want to do here is give your alt tag a basic description with your keywords. ( Do not try to trick the search engines!)
So what do you do with this information?
Well now that you know how a search engine spiders scans web pages, what they look for and then how they recall this information to display it to your buyers it’s time to start optimizing your web pages with these power SEO Strategies!
Now get busy, Bill Parlaman
P.S. Get my FREE Report called 7 Most Common And Costly Mistakes Business Owners Make With Their Website And How To Eliminate Them Immediately, Guaranteed!
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