It\u2019s June and the thermometer is starting to stretch out after its long winter nap.\u00a0 Normally I get excited about the prospect of warm summer days and air-conditioned offices, but since I live in California I\u2019m more worried about finishing this column before the power goes out on me again.\u00a0 Whenever a rolling blackout hits, businesses find themselves trying to operate with their virtual hands tied behind their backs.<\/p>\n
Many nonprofits who haven\u2019t planned for search engines when building their website pages find themselves in a similar situation when they try to achieve higher search rankings. Last time we discussed the importance of choosing proper keyword phrases to target for searcher.\u00a0 This month, I\u2019d like to give you some tips on how to place those phrases into your web pages effectively so the engines can find them.<\/p>\n
Following are the areas in HTML coding of web ages that you need to pay the most attention to.\u00a0 Now if you contract with a web development firm to build your site, you should make sure that their development includes these methods.<\/p>\n
Page Titles<\/strong> \u2013 Make sure that your Title tags are unique, descriptive and longer than just two or three words.\u00a0 Search engines rank titles higher because they assume that\u2019s what the page is about.\u00a0 One caution:\u00a0 make sure the content on your pages truly reflect the page titles; otherwise, the engines will think you\u2019re spamming them.<\/p>\n Heading Tags<\/strong> \u2013 Use the H1 and H2 tags for important summaries of text.\u00a0 These are weighted more highly as well.\u00a0 Current HTML supports these tags as being scalable in terms of size, so the headings on your page don\u2019t have to appear huge.\u00a0 You must separate headings with paragraph text, though, to appear legitimate.\u00a0 If you\u2019re designing a table, the TH tag (an often forgotten one) makes that table cell a heading and its contents will be weighted more heavily.<\/p>\n Body Copy<\/strong> \u2013 Make sure the copy on your pages contain your keyword phrases in more than one place.\u00a0 It is also important to try and keep your keyword phrases at the top of the page, before any tables or other layout designs.\u00a0 The higher these words appear on the page, the more heavily they\u2019re weighted.<\/p>\n Alt Tags<\/strong> \u2013 Alt tags are used to define the text labels you see when you place your mouse over an image on your site.\u00a0 Make sure you put proper text there!\u00a0 Too many people will create their corporate logo in a beautiful image, post it to the top of their web page, but only enter \u201clogo\u201d in the alt text.\u00a0 Not only does this make their brand invisible to search engines, but anyone who is blind or on a text-based browser sees the word logo and has no idea where they are.\u00a0 Don\u2019t be afraid to make the text explanatory.<\/span><\/p>\n Links Page<\/strong> \u2013 Instead of only relying on your site\u2019s internal search engine, place a text-based site map on your site, linking to all important pages.\u00a0 Then make sure that page is linked from your homepage.\u00a0 Search engines use automatic programs called \u201cspiders\u201d to follow links from one page to another and index your site.\u00a0 They can\u2019t use your search engine and they can\u2019t follow your JavaScript mouseovers or image maps.<\/p>\n META Tags<\/strong> \u2013 META tags are tags that don\u2019t show up on the web page itself, but they are placed into the page\u2019s code specifically so search engines can pull from their keywords and descriptions.\u00a0 Not all search engines rely on these tags, but not having them is as much a mistake as thinking they\u2019ll solve all of your search engine ranking problems.\u00a0 Make sure your keywords don\u2019t repeat and your descriptions are complete and accurate.<\/p>\n Doorways<\/strong> \u2013 If your site deals with several different topics, make sure you draw attention to these different audiences by building doorway pages.\u00a0 Doorway pages are static pages that lead visitors to a specific section of your site.\u00a0 They employ all the techniques above while focusing on that section\u2019s specific niche. This way you aren\u2019t having all your keyword phrases fighting each other for relevance.<\/p>\n According to Statistical Research, Inc., Web users report searching the Internet (57%) on an average day. This means that people use search engines more often than any other Web activity, second only to email.\u00a0 If you want new people to hear about your organization online, you\u2019d better make sure you aren\u2019t buried on the 34th<\/sup> page of a search result.\u00a0 Putting these techniques into practice when building a website is one good way to make sure you aren\u2019t left in the dark<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s June and the thermometer is starting to stretch out after its long winter nap.\u00a0 Normally I get excited about the prospect of warm summer days and air-conditioned offices, but since I live in California I\u2019m more worried about finishing this column before the power goes out on me again.\u00a0 Whenever a rolling blackout hits, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[8,7,6],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home-page","tag-search-engine","tag-seo","tag-web-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.genesisintegrated.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.genesisintegrated.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.genesisintegrated.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.genesisintegrated.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.genesisintegrated.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.genesisintegrated.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88,"href":"http:\/\/www.genesisintegrated.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions\/88"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.genesisintegrated.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.genesisintegrated.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.genesisintegrated.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}