Why isn't my website in the Top 10 when I search?

This is one of the most frequently asked questions in the Internet today. It is also one of the most complicated questions to answer so that people understand how difficult and time consuming it can be to achieve a high ranking and keep it over an extended period of time. Since I have limited space, I will give some basic information that everyone who has a website should know and if you have more questions or need assistance in the promotions area for your website, please call us.

The first thing to understand is the term "Meta Tag". A Meta Tag is a line of code contained within your web page that gives specific information to the browser (Firefox or Internet Explorer) that pertains to your website. They are also used by the search engines to help determine how relevant your website is to the keywords that are being used by your site. Below are the three Meta Tags that should be included on every website. Keyword meta tags are not used by Google anymore due to abuse, but should still be included. Meta descriptions and page titles are used by Google.

<title>The title of your website goes here</title>
<meta name="description" content="This is where a reasonably long descriptive sentence of what your website is all about goes, usually with as many keywords included as possible.">
<meta name="keywords" content="This is where your keywords or phrases are put, separated by commas">

The title should be fairly short, usually less than 50 characters and include a few carefully chosen keywords if possible. The description should be a fairly long sentence including as many of your keywords as possible while maintaining a reasonable sentence structure. The keywords or phrases should be one to three words with each keyword separated by a comma (ie - keyword1, keyword2, keyword phrase1, keyword phrase two, keyword3). The best keywords are the words that best describe your site content, but are as specialized as possible. Using keywords that are generic (travel, gifts, internet, games) or vague (water, fun, special) is useless for the search engines. Once your website is created and these Meta Tags are in place, most people think they are home free, but to be honest, that is just the beginning.

Search engines use a program called a spider or robot to read through your web pages and to generate a ranking based on your Meta Tags and the content within those pages. So, the more your keywords are reflected in the content on your page, the higher your ranking. Seems like a simple equation, but many other factors are considered by the spider in determining what your final ranking will be. In addition, each of the different engines puts more or less weight on those factors, so changing something may give you a better rank on one search engine and cause you to have a lower rank on another. Some of those other factors are: How long the website has been online? What rank you had the last time the engine read your site? How many people link to your site and how many sites you link to? In some cases, they even track how much traffic your site gets and the sites with more traffic get a better rank.

In conclusion, to really be considered for a top rank within a search engine, your site needs to contain at least a good page title and the description Meta Tag. Meta Tags with carefully chosen keywords and phrases and links from other sites to your site is also a good idea. If you would like to read more about search engines and what you can do to make your site better, see the links at the top of this page, email us, or call us at 402-477-8300.

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