Search Engines 101

At the Studio of UR2 Creative Web Development & Design Company, we focus on our client's website placement by determining and applying our optimization techniques and search engine marketing experience at the beginning of the design process, instead of doing a corrective job afterwards.

Improving Your Rankings in the Search Engines requires considerable understanding of how they function and how they order results. We have provided the following information about the optimization of your website to better equip you with understanding this involving and complex process.

Understanding Search Engines; A search engine builds its database either by getting list submissions from webmasters or by using software robots. Robot or Spiders are programs that browse through the web and store links and information about the pages that they visit. There are fewer manually indexed search engines compared to their Spider-indexed counterparts such as Google, Yahoo, Alta Vista, etc. The way a spider indexes and ranks a website is very much dependent on what information it receives from your website and how we have designed the site.

Keywords; Your website is indexed by search engines on the basis of your key words. When a search engine sends a spider to your web site, it determines that pages' keywords by counting the words on the web page it is visiting. The words that appear most frequently or considered most significant (Words that are mentioned towards the top of a document and words that are repeated several times throughout the document are more likely to be considered important.) become your keywords. When a user searches for a particular term, the ranking of your site in the results would depend on the weight of that search term on your site.

Creating Copy; As much as it is important to use your keyword as many times as possible on a page, you should also pay attention to how the text sounds when read by user. Overstuffing the text with keywords will not only confuse or put-off a visitor but you might also get identified as a spammer by search engines and your website removed from the database forever.

Meta Tags; Many search engines index websites by the meta tags in the documents' HTML. The "title" and the "description" meta tags are often used by search engines in indexing. It is essential to use your keyword in the title tag. Use relevant words in keyword meta tags such as synonyms of your keyword, or words directly relevant to your page.

Password-Protected Pages; Spiders cannot enter password-protected pages.

Flash; Most spiders are unable to index Flash content or follow their navigation links. Flash should be an optional link with a duplicate spider-friendly HTML page, or placed in as enhancements within HTML.

JavaScript; Search engines are unable to read JavaScript and JavaScript should be placed as an option for visitors, similar to use of Flash.

Outside Links; Number and relevancy of outside links significantly affects the ranking of your website by search engines, and even helps you get your website indexed faster. If a site that has a link to yours is already indexed, the spiders visiting that site will follow the link to your website. You can build links to your website in several ways such as Link exchange or reciprocal linking, requesting addition of your url to informational sites or directories relevant to the subject of your site, and Affiliate programs.

Tables; Spiders do not have a problem reading the content of tables, however if you use nested tables, it makes it difficult for spiders to navigate through your website.

Frame Sets; Frames always pose difficulty for spiders. Some spiders are absolutely unable to read frames pages, while others see only the master page and therefore will not be able to read complete webpage because of which your website will not be indexed properly.

Graphics; A careful balance of graphics and text must be achieved for your placement success. Graphics are not read by spiders and reduce space for text but also affect the speed of loading of the page. Alt-tags provide text equivalent information whenever graphics are present, and will greatly aid in search engine indexing and the compliance of ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) requirements.

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