Promotional
Content... It's the little things that count
Author:
Edward B. Toupin
Promotional
content is the invisible content in the various
recesses of a Web page. This type of content is used by search
engines and directories to properly categorize your site and its
pages during indexing.
--- Site Title ---
The title is the first thing a search engine displays as a
result of a search. This makes it imperative that the title
contains something readable and descriptive. Do not place a
bunch of redundant terms in your title---make sure that the
title can be read as a sentence. If the reader cannot understand
the meaning of the title, then chances are they will not visit
your site.
Once you create your page title, place it once within the header
of the page using the <title></title> tags. Many marketers will
place their title as many as five to ten times within the header
of their page! This is good in that your relevance increases
from the number of keywords; however, this repetitive approach
is poor netiquette and is usually not accepted by most search
engines.
--- META Tags ---
Meta Tags are information fields located in the header of a Web
page. These tags store information about your browser, keywords,
site description, and authoring information. The two main Meta
Tags are "description" and "keywords." The
"description" tag
contains a short description of your page while the "keywords"
tag contains a search keyword list for your page. These two Meta
Tags are used by search engines to index your site and are
critical elements of every Web page. When your site is indexed,
users can enter search topics into the search engine to locate
your site based on these two tags.
The Meta Tags should look like this in the <head> of your Web
page:
<meta name="description" content="Information.">
<meta
name="keywords" content="Keywords,go,here">
To ensure the proper indexing of your page, you will have to
devise a content scheme that targets numerous types of search
engines. Note that different search engines will index your site
in different ways, depending on the content. For instance, the
following list provides information on the different ways that
search engines can index your site:
* Some search engines look for an agreement between the
description, keyword, title, and body.
* Some search engines use only the information located in the
first line of the body of the page.
* Some search engines use a combination of the Meta Tags and the
body content to weight your page based upon consistency.
Obviously, you would want to maintain a consistent content and
style throughout your page. It is important, however, to learn
how the different types of search engines work to have your page
properly positioned in the lists.
--- Hidden Form Fields ---
Once you've developed the keywords for your site, you'll find
that you still have over a dozen or so discarded phrases and
words that are relevant to your page. Your Meta Tags are
probably filled to the maximum 255 character limit and that the
first line of your page body is a graphic and contains no
pertinent text. Forcing any of these additional phrases and
keywords into the page can get you rejected from several search
engines for "keyword stuffing," described below.
These types of dilemmas are quite common for many Web page
developers, but the solution is simple: a hidden form field.
This form field is identical to every other form field (e.g.
input fields, radio buttons, check boxes, etc.), however, it
cannot be seen on the page in a browser.
The hidden form fields go in the body of the Web page and look
like the following:
<form> <input type="hidden"
value="Keyword,list,here"> </form>
Many search engines will recognize hidden form fields and use
the information to index your site in the same manner as they
would standard text in the body of your page. Some search
engines ignore such fields, however, it is important to create
pages that are acceptable across all search engines.
Hidden form fields can be used as the first line of text in your
Web page and should reside in your page before any other
content. The reason for this placement is that most search
engines will only use the first 2,048 characters in a document.
With hidden form fields, you can still get those extra keywords
into your document without forfeiting space and layout.
--- Keywords ---
Keywords are one of the more important elements of a Web page
since they describe the page to which they belong. The keywords
that you select for your site must be relevant to the page as
well as frequently used within the page's content.
Relevant keywords provide a better position in a search engine
for your target market. For instance, if your site is specific
to a new piece of financial software, it's important to stress
the keywords that best describe the general and specific
characteristics of the software. If someone performs a search
for "automobile" and your site appears, it's certain that you
will get a few users. The problem is that these users will do
you no good since they are interested in another topic.
Obviously, if you're selling some product that's important to a
wide range of markets, then nearly any choice of keywords would
be relevant to your site. The point is that you want to ensure
that you're bringing in only those users that are interested in
what your site has to offer. In this way, you are maximizing
your marketing effort.
The following rules may not make sense immediately, however, by
following them, you're sure to increase your search engine
position as well as the number of hits your site receives:
* Plural Form of Keywords When a user performs a search, it's
unlikely that they will enter a search term that exactly matches
the keywords you selected for your site. In some cases, the user
will enter the singular form of a keyword and in others, they
may enter the plural form. It's essential to capture both forms
of a keyword to maximize your exposure!
* Repeat Important Keywords In the days of old, we could repeat
a keyword numerous times to increase the relevancy of a site in
a search engine. This repetition allowed sites to be placed
higher in the search engine's list so that the user would see
that site first. Today, search engines filter out those sites
that over-repeat keywords. It's best to repeat the most
important keywords no more than twice to increase your relevancy
without being eliminated.
* Diversify Keyword Meanings Assume that every user has a
different vocabulary--some users say "book" while others may say
"publication" or "document." Each word refers to the same
thing,
however, unless your keywords are properly selected, you may
only get one-third of your potential hits! When devising your
keyword scheme, take into account the different forms of a given
keyword. Create the keywords important to your site in such a
way that, regardless of the search terms used by a user, your
site will appear in the results list.
* Keyword Variations Consider the fact that users will not enter
the keywords into a search engine the same way every time. For
instance, some users may enter "real time software" while others
may enter "real-time software" or "real time software." Think
about the keyword variations to ensure the capture of as many
users as possible. Also, consider common misspellings of
keywords. I know many intelligent individuals who tend to
misspell certain words because of the phonetic spelling of the
word---consider "eves" and "eaves." If a user consistently
misspells such a word and you happen to sell plant hangers for
under eaves, you might lose potential clients.
* Keyword Combinations and Phrases Some search engines will only
take the first 255 characters of a keyword list, while others
accept a nearly unlimited list of keywords. The problem is that
you must target the 255-character limitation to be accepted by
as many search engines as possible. One method to accommodate
the keyword list limitation is to use phrases that best describe
the page. For instance, I could use "ebook marketing" as a
phrase that could be found with several combinations of search
topics in a search engine. Another method is to ensure that the
most relevant keywords are located at the front of the keyword
list---even with a 255-character limitation, the most important
keywords are accepted.
--- Keyword Selection ---
Your objective is to attract as many relevant visits to your
site as possible. With that in mind, you will have to select
keywords that are commonly used by users and that are relevant
to your site.
You can easily attract users by entering such keywords as "naked
women, adult, sex, ..." into your keyword list. Since these are
some of the most searched-for keywords, I can guarantee that
your site will get hits. Do you think that someone searching for
pornography is going to spend very much time on your page? The
problem here is that you will be attracting people who won't
provide a relevant hit to your site. This tactic wastes
bandwidth, time, and money.
--- Developing Keyword Lists ---
Using the information we've reviewed, let's look at creating a
keyword list for a page. This is actually a more difficult task
then creating the page itself since you must determine the best
keywords that describe your page. To begin this task, let's ask
ourselves: "how would people begin to search for a site like
mine?"
Immediately, you could come up with about three-dozen keywords
to place in a keyword list, however, many of the keywords that
you think are relevant may turn out to be useless. Think about
how you perform searches for certain information and apply that
experience to the selection of keywords for your page. You'll
find that the time taken to create a good keyword list will be
most beneficial.
The best way to weed out useless keywords is to use the steps
outlined in the following list. These steps are proven and have
worked on several sites I've marketed.
* Create an exhaustive list of words that describe your site.
*
Review and eliminate words that are least descriptive or
redundant.
* Create plural versions of words without altering
their form.
* Consider and note misspelling variations.
*
Combine words into phases.
* Eliminate duplicate phrases.
* Eliminate phrases with words duplicated in other phrases.
*
Check for other words or phrases that can diversify the list.
*
Create a comma-delimited list of all phrases and remaining
words.
* Move and order the most relevant words to the front of
the list.
* Duplicate the four more important words and phrases
twice.
* Ask an associate to review the words and phrases.
* Ask
an associate to edit the list based on their search preferences.
* Clean up and limit the list to 255 characters.
* Perform searches using your keywords to locate other relevant sites.
*
Go to these sites to see how they created their keyword list.
About the
author:
Edward B. Toupin is a freelance consultant, writer, and published author living
in Las Vegas. With 10 years of experience, Edward provides quality Web site
design, development, and marketing as well as writing, document design and
planning, and e-book publishing services. You can contact him at etoupin@toupin.com.