Understanding Search Ranking

Now that you understand the two basic types of search mechanisms on the web, let's dig a little deeper into search engines so you can understand the areas in which you need to focus to optimize your search engine ranking and website success.

Keyword Placement

Search engines consider where you place your keywords, and how many times you use them, in order to figure out your ranking and the relevancy of your site to a customer search request. 

When keywords are placed in the page titles and meta tags and when keywords appear EARLY in the content of your page, your page will be ranked higher.

Website Title and Description 

This is rather like the headline in a newspaper advertisement.  It must quickly and effectively communicate to your customer what your company does, how you can solve a problem or desire they may have and make them want to know more. 

Just as a headline must be compelling, so must your website title and approach, or someone else will grab your customer's attention. 

Longer titles are more effective, because you can provide more information, but make each word COUNT. 

Don't just build length! 

Use the right WORDS - KEYWORDS - instead of using up your word allotment with words that mean nothing to your customer. 

Don't use ALL CAPS.  These sentences are hard to read and your customer will stop reading after the first couple of words. 

Don't use all initial caps either. 

Use one initial cap at the beginning of the title, followed by words that contain all lower case letters.  These are easier to read. 

META Tags

These tags let you write a website description that some (not all) search engines can use to help define and describe your site.

If you don't provide these, some search engines will select content or copy from your page to help you customer figure out what your site is, what you sell and whether the customer wants to visit your site. 

Your META tag will look something like this:

<META NAME=" Description" CONTENT=" Description of the governorsteeshirts.com site.">

Use no more than twenty-five words to describe your site and make these the right words.  Use keywords, in a mix of language that inspires the customer to visit your site and buy your products. 

If you are going to use a META tag to point search engines to keywords, you should know that not all search engines recognize this reference. 

But, some do! 

So, you may want to insert this tag to help you build traffic to your site.  The tag will look like this:

<META NAME=" Keywords" CONTENT=" tee shirt, t-shirt, custom tees, personalized tee shirts">

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