Relevancy Tips and Things to Avoid

Here are a number of things that can help you with relevancy ranking in the major search engines. This includes things you should do and techniques you should avoid.


Not all search engines recognize META tags, notably Excite and Webcrawler. In order to improve your chances of being found within these engines be sure to implant keywords within the TITLE tags of your site. These engines also place higher amounts of relevance on the keywords that they find in text that is placed high in the page. Search engine spiders read the text in a page much like a person reads a book. They start at the top and read from left to right. If your site utilizes tables, it helps to have the most relevant keyword laden text in the upper left-hand corner of the page (if at all possible).


Another useful technique is to create separate, focused entrance pages for each keyword/keyword phrase you want to be listed highly under. This gives your site the best opportunity to get high listings for that word on a given page. It also provides that many more opportunities to be seen. These separate entrance pages can be replicas of your front page with slight changes to the text and tags, or you can create totally separate and unique entrance pages. However, overuse of this approach can be seen as "spam" or "spamdexing." So, we suggest no more than five separate entrance pages, one for each of your top five keywords/keyword phrases. Also, when using unique entrance pages, do not use any type of META refresh or "splash page" feature that automatically forwards you to another page. Doing so can hurt your chances of getting listed.


Don't try to overload your title, keyword or description tags with keywords. It is important to use a particular keyword several times in the different areas, but if a submission looks 'keyword loaded' it may be considered spam and will likely be skipped or changed by their review staff. There is a somewhat fine line between effectiveness and spam, so be careful! It is important to make sure your two or three most important keywords/keyword phrases are found in the title tag. This tag carries the most weight across the board with search engines. Also, try to use variations of those keywords used in the title tag within the keyword, and description tags as well. Lastly, include your most important keywords at least a few times in the first header or paragraph of text on the site. Note: Make sure your title and description tags are legible and professional.


Some search engines will pick up keywords from the ALT tags within images. ALT tags are used by some sites use to label graphical images within a page for browsers that only support text or have the images turned off. The content of the ALT tag for an image pops up in a little yellow box upon mouse over. So these tags are also visible to the browsers that display the graphics. Overuse of keywords in ALT tags will give a page a less professional look so use them sparingly.


Search Engine spiders cannot follow links contained within an image map. If your site utilizes image maps, it is a good idea to also include standard text links to the major content areas of your site at the bottom of the page so that search engines can follow those links to index the interior pages of your site.


The NOFRAMES tag is a tag that was created for use with browsers that don't support frames. Some search engines can pick up relevant META tag information in the frames tag, but there are some that are not able to. The addition of a NOFRAMES tag can accomplish two goals, 1) Users with browsers that don't support frames can still view your page, and 2) Spiders can read through the code in your NOFRAMES tag and find the information needed to correctly place your site. Additionally, it is important that you put the META tags for description and keywords into any and all Frames sources as well as the page source codes.

Things to Avoid


Spamming is an attempt to increase web site ranking in the search engines by simply repeating keywords over and over again. Although once a popular and successful technique, this approach rarely works with most search engines. In most cases, search engines are now programmed to ignore pages that employ this technique. Ethically and logically, the content of web pages ought to be enough for search engines to determine relevance and appropriate placement without promoters and webmasters having to resort to repeating keywords for no other reason than to appear higher in the rankings. The Internet community in general, has come to dislike sites that use this approach in gaining high placement and tend to avoid sites that use this method of promotion.


Frames are a real eye-catcher and an innovative technique to employ on your site. However, they may cause search engines not to be able to properly index your site, seriously diminishing the relevancy of your listing on the engine. Most major search engines will ignore frame links established in a frames orientated page. In fact, they will ignore all information inside frames. If you are going to use frames, start using the NOFRAMES tag to provide an alternative for these engines. Furthermore, you may consider creating a non-frames section of your site to index separately within the engines.


Loading a page with embedded keywords is not effective anymore due to the fact that most search engines are now ignoring information in the comment areas of a site's source code. Additionally, embedding keywords or text in your site set to be the same color as the background is an outdated technique that many engines look for and may exclude sites using it.