Search Engine Spiders Like to Read

So far, we have looked at using targeted keywords in your domain name and your META tags to improve positioning on the search engines. Now it's time to turn our attention to the actual text within your Web site. While a good domain name and targeted META tags can help improve search engine rankings, they alone will not help a Web site if it does not contain relevant text on the page being optimized.

How important is it to have targeted keywords in the text of your Web site? Let's consider the extreme. Let's say you wish to attract customers to your site who are interested in buying computer supplies. You purchase an optimized domain name, research your keywords and optimize your META tags. Then you go and blow it all by creating a Web site that is full of images, very little text and not one mention of computer supplies. Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Yet thousands of Web site fall into the trap of building beautiful looking sites that are full of images yet very little text.

Relevancy is the New Buzzword

Most Web site owners spend hours researching META tag formation and search engine submission techniques, but fail to tackle the one thing that can give them multiple benefits. How your site is presented and the text you use can have a dramatic impact on your search engine positioning. Most search engine spiders read the text that is contained on your Web site and use this information when deciding if your site is relevant enough to be displayed in its results. If a search engine scans your Web site and finds no mention of the keyword being searched (in this case, "computer supplies"), it doesn't matter how great your META tags are, your site will not be displayed at the top of the results. The reason being is search engines like to display Web sites that are as relevant as possible and they figure that if the keyword is mentioned on the page, then the Web site will likely be just what the searcher is looking for. Some search engines even ignore the META tags completely, believing that relevancy can only truly be found by searching the text contained within a Web site (Google being the obvious example of this).

What is also important is to make sure that the text on your Web site makes sense. Don't just string a whole bunch of keywords together in a hope of proving to the search engines that your Web site is relevant. Not only are the search engines smart enough to recognize keywords on your Web site, but they are also smart enough to determine if they are presented in logical pattern. Repeated keywords back to back on your Web site will simply raise a red flag to the search engines that you are attempting to manipulate your positioning.

Beware of Graphical Text

One last point about the text on your Web site. Make sure that you don't rely on text that is part of a graphical image. Many Web site designers like to create blocks of text as an image and then place the image on the Web site. While this can look appealing, the search engines cannot read it. All they see is that there is a large image on the Web site taking up space where text should be. The best rule of thumb is to hold the left mouse button and move it over the text on your Web site. If the text becomes highlighted, then the search engines are likely to be able to read it. Graphical text is not necessarily the death of your Web site, but you will need to use compensatory techniques, which we will cover at a later date.