Follow these suggestions to improve your site’s ranking and you will be googily rewarded.
Metadata
When designing your website, each page contains a space between the <head> tags to insert metadata, or information about the contents of your page.
Title Metadata
Title metadata is responsible for the page titles displayed at the top of a browser window. It is the most important metadata on your page. The title of your page should be relevant to the content contained within and should vary as you click through the pages.
Description Metadata
Description metadata is the textual description that a browser will use in your page search return. Think of it as your site’s window display—a concise and appealing description of what is contained within, with the goal of encouraging people to enter.
Keyword Metadata
Keyword metadata are the search words and terms that people type when they want to find your page. You’ll want to include a variety of words/terms, including common misspellings. However, don’t get greedy: if your list becomes excessive, the browser may completely ignore the data. As a general rule, try to keep it to about 10 or 15 terms.
Have a link-worthy site
Focus on creating relevant links within the text. Instead of having “click here” links, try writing out the name of the destination. “Click here” has no browser value beyond the attached URL, whereas “Michigan Tech Enterprise Program” is rich with keywords.
Publish relevant content
Quality content created specifically for your intended user increases site traffic, which improves your site’s authority and relevance. To produce quality content, pepper your text with keywords that mirror the most likely search terms used to find your site.
Update your content regularly
You’ve probably noticed that we feel pretty strongly about content. Search engines do, too. Regularly updated content is viewed as one of the best indicators of a site’s relevancy, so be sure to keep it fresh.
Use alt tags
Always describe your visual and video media using alt tags, or alternative text descriptions. They allow search engines to locate your page, which is crucial—especially for those who use text-only browsers.
These are only a few of the many methods for improving your search engine ranking. If you want to learn more, we recommend the following resources:
- www.seomoz.org—professional blog and SEO tools
- www.google.com/webmasters/tools—a great reference for understanding your Google site stats
- www.google.com/addurl—add your URL to Google
- http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit—add your URL to Yahoo