The Do's and Don'ts of Search Engine Optimization

Discover the top 10 things you can do that can make or break your ranking with the free search engines.

By Corey Rudl

If you want your online business to be successful, it's a good idea to optimize your site on a regular basis to make sure it's got a good position in the Web's top search engines. However, in order to maintain your ranking, you have to keep on top of what's happening in the rapidly changing search engine industry. The rules that affected your ranking yesterday may be meaningless tomorrow.

Read on to learn more about the latest developments in the search engine industry and what key tactics you should--and shouldn't--use to optimize your site to make sure it gets a high ranking with all the major search engines. Plus we'll show you the tools and resources you can use to keep it there.

The Times, They Are a Changin'For the past few years, the major search engines have been preparing to square off against each other and battle it out for the industry's top spot. Google has been No. 1 for a while now, but Yahoo! and MSN have been making moves to steal the crown.

With a close-to-55-percent market share, Google is still extremely powerful. Yahoo! is the closest runner-up with about 20 percent of users choosing it as their main search engine, and MSN is a distant but threatening third, with about 10 percent of the global usage share.

Keep in mind, however, that Google and Yahoo! power many of the smaller search engines. For example, Google powers the free listings featured on AOL and Netscape, plus the paid listings featured on AOL, Netscape, Ask Jeeves, HotBot, Teoma and Lycos. Yahoo! powers free listings featured on MSN, AltaVista, AllTheWeb and HotBot, plus the paid listings on MSN, AltaVista and AllTheWeb.

MSN won't be powered by Yahoo! for much longer, however: Recently, MSN came out with a preview of their own long-anticipated search engine technology. They're still working out the bugs, and the official MSN Search engine is still being powered by Yahoo!. But you can expect MSN to go solo sometime over the next few months.

You need to be aware of these changes if you want to gear your optimization efforts toward the engines that will send you as much traffic as possible. Of course, you also need to keep tabs on changes to the search engines themselves!

Search engines frequently change the algorithms they use to rank sites. They don't want unscrupulous site owners manipulating their indexing methods in order to get high rankings. By doing so, they damage the integrity of free search. As soon as the search engines become aware of a trick being used by "search engine spammers" to boost their site ranking, they figure out a way to catch them.

The search engines don't want to be manipulated by marketers. They want to provide the best unbiased results possible for any given search--or they'll lose users. That's why they need to change their algorithms so frequently--to stay ahead of the tricks people use to get top rankings.

So be careful! You don't want to catch yourself employing a great strategy promoted by a marketing "expert," only to find out it's a tactic the search engines hate! That could get you booted off their listings in no time flat.

Let's have a look at what exactly the search engines are currently looking for when indexing sites--and what they'll punish you for.

The DosThere are still a lot of legitimate ways you can optimize your site to generate or maintain a high ranking without angering the search engines and causing them to drop you from their list. Here are some of the best things you can to do ensure your site has a high ranking:

1. Ask relevant sites to link to your site. In the past, scoring a high ranking with a search engine was all about positioning your keywords in "prime real estate" positions in your text and site coding. All that has changed, however, because these days, links are king.

Search engines place a huge amount of importance on the number of sites that link to yours. But it's not just the quantity of links that matter, it's also the quality. Search engines look at how relevant the links are, that is, how much the content of the linking site has in common with the content on your site. The more relevant, the better.

Search engines also look at how important the linking site is. What kind of online presence does it have? How much traffic does it get? For example, your site will get a higher ranking if it's linked to by sites such as BBC.com or nationalgeographic.com instead of, say, the personal homepage of your friend's neighbor's kid.

2. Pay attention to keyword inclusion and placement. Keywords may no longer be the sole determining factor of a site's ranking, but they're still pretty important. The most useful places to include them are:

In your domain name--only make sure your keywords are in the root of your URL, not the stem. For example, if your main keyword phrase is "cell phones," try to get a domain name such as "www.cell-phones.com" instead of "www.mobileusa.com/cell-phones." Some search engines will actually penalize sites for including key words in the stem of a URL.
In the title tags in your source code
In the meta description of your site. This is much less important than it used to be, but it can't hurt.
In your meta keyword tags

And be sure you only include relevant keywords. Search engines will penalize you if you try to sneak in keywords that have nothing to do with the content of your site.

3. Create content-rich information pages to direct traffic to your site. An easy way to boost the number of pages that link to your site is to create some pages yourself. However, you have to make sure these pages contain valuable content that provides people with useful information. Search engines hate "pointer pages" that have no content and exist only to add to the number of links pointing to a site.

Be sure the information relates to the content on your site and has your keywords placed in advantageous positions. This will boost the ranking of your pages with the search engines and ensure they get lots of traffic--which they can then redirect to your site.

4. Submit your site to online directories. Be sure to submit your site to important directories such as Yahoo!, the Open Directory Project and About.com, as well as smaller directories. Your listing on these directories will help your ranking with the major search engines.

5. Multiply and conquer. Create a community of related sites that link to each other. Why stop at only one information page? The more content-rich sites that point to your site, the better.

You can also boost the number of links that point to your site by dividing it into several separate sites that all link to each other. This works especially well if you sell a number of different products or services. If you build a different site to focus on each of your products and services, then you can also concentrate the use of specific keyword phrases on each site. That's another great way to boost your search engine ranking.

The Don'tsNow that we've covered the dos, here come the don'ts. Although these questionable tactics have worked well in the past, the search engines absolutely hate them. If they catch you using any of these tricks, they may go so far as to drop you from their listings.

1. Beware of irrelevant links. Yes, it's a good idea to get a lot of different links pointing to your site, but the search engines only like relevant links. If they find sites that have nothing in common with the content on your site linked to your Web site, they'll lower your relevancy rating.

2. Beware of irrelevant keywords. Search engines hate finding irrelevant keywords on your site--especially in your meta tags. If they catch you using keywords that have nothing to do with the actual content of your site, they'll penalize you for it.

3. Don't "keyword stuff" your meta tags. In the past, people used to repeat their keywords in their meta tags over and over again. This used to get them a high ranking with the search engines--but not any more. Search engines are on to this trick and will punish you for it by dropping your ranking.

4. Don't create "link farms." Link farms are the evil cousins of the information pages we discussed above. In the past, some spammers used to build multiple "doorway" sites that existed only to multiply the number of links pointing to their sites. Unlike content-rich information pages, these doorway pages would usually only include a string of keyword terms that would earn them a high ranking with the search engines.

The search engines have caught on to this tactic, however, and will drop you from their listings if they find you using it.

5. Avoid "free for all" link pages. Don't bother placing links to your site on pages where everyone and their cousin is invited to put up a link. Such sites have extremely low relevancy ratings and will cost you points with the search engines.

Now that you know the dos and don'ts of optimizing your site, let us introduce you to the essential tools and resources you need to utilize to optimize your site and stay on top of the search engine game. There are a lot of great tools out there that can help you optimize your site while ensuring that you stay on the good side of all the search engines. Here are a few of our favorites.

ToolsWordTracker. This great online tool helps you select specific keyword phrases that will direct more traffic to your site. Free and paid versions are available. Optilink. A lot of search engine optimization experts swear by this software. It's a link reputation analyzer that helps you determine a site's reputation and why the search engines like it or dislike it. It comes in handy when you're checking out the competition or looking for reputable sites to link to yours. WebPosition Gold. This is a great piece of search engine placement software that generates Web pages designed to rank high on the major search engines. It also analyzes your existing Web pages, provides suggestions for improvement and tracks your ranking on different search engines.

ResourcesSearch Engine News. Planet Ocean's online resource, "The Unfair Advantage Book on Winning the Search Engine Wars," is updated monthly and provides excellent optimization tips and information on the search engine industry. Search Engine Watch. This free site is another rich source of tips and information on the search engine industry. Paid memberships are available for more advanced content. Search Engine Guide. This free site contains a lot of useful information about the smaller search engines on the Web and who you should submit your site to in order to get a better ranking with the bigger search engines.

Final ThoughtsRecent research by search engine optimization experts suggests that there's a surprising lack of overlap between the results produced by the major search engines. All too often, sites that are ranked high on Google get a much poorer listing with Yahoo! and vice versa.

This could mean that webmasters are focusing their optimization efforts solely on one search engine while neglecting to improve their ranking with the other. Or they might be using optimization tactics that work for Google on Yahoo!, without being aware that Yahoo! uses different criteria to index a site.

Either way, sites that aren't optimized for both Google and Yahoo! are missing out on a lot of potential visitors.

And don't forget, MSN will soon be throwing its hat into the ring and switching from Yahoo! to its own search engine technology. When that happens, you should be sure to submit your site to MSN as well.

No one really knows what the future holds for the search engine industry, but one thing's for sure: Businesses that don't stay on top of the changes are going to find themselves slipping behind. Don't let that happen to your business!