Larry Swanson
Senior Editor
The WebWorkz 
Last month we told you how to improve search engine placement by using the "keywords" meta tag.
Now it's time to fine-tune your search engine positioning.
In addition to the "keywords" meta tag, the search engines also look at the
placement of your keywords elsewhere on your Web pages. Generally, they look at the "description"
meta tag, the "title" tag, and the content of
your Web pages. Each search engine has its own way of analyzing the placement of your key
words and key concepts in your page and its own way of evaluating the resulting
"keyword density." Software packages (such as GR Software's GRKda ) are now appearing which will
perform an in-depth analysis of your keyword density, but you can do a lot simply by using
FrontPage to make sure that your keywords are properly distributed in your Web pages.
You want to make sure that the keywords you list in your "keywords" meta tag
are reinforced by the rest of the elements of your Web page. There are four elements you
can check right now with FrontPage to improve your keyword density.
- The title of your Web page is given high priority in most search
engine's ranking algorithms, so you should be sure to include in it the most relevant
keywords about your page. It is also what most search engines will display as the link to
your site, so it should be brief and descriptive. Since some search engines display
as few as 60 characters of the title in their search results, your title should be as
brief as possible. Here's how to add a title to your Web page using FrontPage:
- Click on File on the menu bar and then select Page
Properties
- Click on the General tab in the Page Properties dialog box
- Enter your descriptive title in the "Title"
box
- Click OK in the dialog box
- You can control how your page is described in the search engine results by using the meta
"description" tag. Like your page's title, this tag should reinforce
the most relevant keywords about your page. It should also read like a catalog description
of your site, since it will generally display immediately after your title. Some search
engines display as few as 135 characters of the "description" meta tag, so you
should not get too wordy here. Here's how to add a description to your Web page using
FrontPage:
- Click on File on the menu bar and then select Page
Properties
- Click on the Custom tab and then click on the Add
button under "User Variables"
- Enter the word "description" (no quotes) in
the "Name" box
- Enter your description in the "Value" box
- Click OK in the dialog box
- Most search engines evaluate the content of the body of your Web pages
(to a search engine, this means all of the words that appear between the <BODY> and
</BODY> HTML tags). In fact, since so many Web sites have tried to fool the
search engines by filling their meta tags with irrelevant but frequently searched-for
keywords, some search engines attach more weight to this content than to your meta tags or
title. Remember, the goal of the search engines is to give their users the most relevant
search results; if they think they can best do this by evaluating the actual content of
Web pages, then that's what will get the most weight in their relevance rankings. Some
search engines give more weight to sites that they have had a human editor evaluate;
obviously, you will need good content to pass muster with these non-robots. To see how
your page looks to the search engines' robots, click on the HTML tab at
the bottom of the FrontPage screen. Click on the Normal tab at the
bottom of the FrontPage screen to return to the normal view.
- Part of the content of your page is the images it contains. The search
engines' robots can't actually look at your pictures and rate their relevance to a search.
However, by using the "ALT" attribute of the <IMG> HTML tag, you can give
the robots a text description of your images. Here's how to provide a description of the
images in your Web page using FrontPage. Repeat this procedure for each image on your
page:
- Right click on the image and select Image Properties
from the list
- Click on the General tab and place your cursor in the
Text box
- Enter your alternate text description of the image in the Text
box
- Click OK in the dialog box
For more on improving your keyword density and your search engine rankings, see the
article Use Keywords to Improve Your
Search Engine Placement.
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