(Note: since this article was written, there have been posted a series of articles on CompuSolver.com and a video, "Secrets to Website Success" you really should watch.)

Is your website ready?

The first step, of course, is to create a website that you're proud to have represent your business and that is easy to navigate. Make sure the home page tells visitors "Yes, this is what you're looking for" (not in so many words, but in total content) and makes it easy for them to get more information.

That's a more important step than some may realize. Years ago, when I was about to open my first computer store (the first new/used computer store in the Dallas / Fort Worth area), we'd worked all night and had just finished installing the last software shelf when it was time to open for the very first time.

The store was obviously brand new and not quite ready for "prime-time", with one wall unpainted and one of the display tables half-finished. A computer store owner from the other side of the metroplex dropped by that afternoon and after looking around, he gave what I think is some good advice.

The store was obviously brand new and not quite ready for "prime-time", with one wall unpainted and one of the display tables half-finished. A computer store owner from the other side of the metroplex dropped by that afternoon and after looking around, he gave what I think is some good advice.

I think this applies even more to websites than to brick-and-mortor stores. At least, in my computer store, I had a chance to talk with customers and perphaps overcome any negative visual impressions. Not so with a website. Your web pages must "speak" for themselves.

Is there a logical sales process in place?

You should think about your branding and your niche, then define who your particular customers likely will be. Now, does your home page appeal specifically to these customers? Are their key concerns addressed on this page? Not necessarily in detail, of course. You can bold titles with teaser blurbs that link to pages with more detail.

Each page should have a call for action that leads to either filling out a form to request a sample video or perhaps even to make a deposit to reserve a date. If your website doesn't motivate people to take action and make it easy for them to do so, it won't close many sales.

How search engines work

A search engine's job is to help people find web pages appropriate to the keywords they're searching on. (I'm going to invent a major metro area in Oklahoma, called "Moscow", for the purpose of this article and to keep me out of legal issues with existing businesses.) If I live in Moscow, Oklahoma and am looking for a wedding videographer, I might type the following keywords:
moscow wedding videographers.

(Note: there are online apps that can help you find the most popular keywords for your industry)

Since many people don't customize the default settings for their search engine, it is best to try and be in the first ten results.

From the search engine's point of view, they want to deliver the most appropriate web pages for the keywords entered. There are several attributes about web pages that tend to indicate the focus of their content:

• Meta tags, like title, description and keywords
• Heading tags, like [h1]; [h2];
• Attention tags, like [b]; [i];
• Links - [a href='thisurl']
• Info tags, like [alt]; [longdesc]

(square brackets used here instead of angle brackets to ensure proper viewing)

These give weight depending on how high up in the content the keywords are found.

Some also count the number of times keywords are used on a page. Not enough times and it may figure that this page doesn't cover the topic very well. Too many times and it may guess that you're trying to spam the search engines. Some also look to see whether the keywords still appear down near the bottom of the page.

Search engines cannot interpret images, so they rely on the alt and title image tags and most give weight for the image name also. Search engines cannot interpret video and Flash apps. They can only read meta tags and text, though we can expect new developments in this area.

A couple more things that most people don't realize - search engines even look at folder names for clues about the content, but some give more weight to pages in the root folder. A lot of weight is given to the domain name itself.

Search engine programmers are sensitive to the fact that many people attempt to fool their scripts and spam the search engines. Many will penalize such sites by dropping them entirely, or placing them in a "sandbox" where they're severely limited.

How do search engine scripts work? They use "robots" or "webbots" that continually go out on the web and scan every page on a site, looking for the things I've outlined above and more. Their results go into a database that is constantly changing.

Your domain name

For the example above, if my business name is "Moscow Wedding Videos" and if I can obtain that domain name, I'm in pretty good shape. But if I can't get moscowweddingvideos.com I would change the name of my business. Having a domain name to match your business name is as important as your dba registration, if not more so.

But what if my business name is "Castello Productions"? If it is available, I would still try to grab moscowweddingvideos.com or, if it was not available, yet there was no such named business in my area, I might get moscow-wedding-videos.com. It would be tempting to buy the name even if there was an active business with that name, if only to keep them from getting it or to set it up and deflect their customers to my own business, but I would consider that as being unethical.

Not everyone is ethical, so if there is a domain name available that reflects your business, you should buy it before someone else does.

What would I do with this second domain name? I would set it aside and first setup my "real" website. Then I would look to see what points could be covered better or what niche I am weak on that I'd like to improve. This second site would be setup with those issues in mind, but most importantly, with the search engines in mind. No more than one link per page would link back to my original site.

Unseen stuff

We began with the presumption that you've already created your website. It is attractive, professional and has a logical marketing progression leading to an action that should result in a sale. We do not want to do anything to detract from that.

When you browse to your home page, look at the top part of your browser. What do you see? That is your page title. Despite the fact that some search engines claim to ignore meta tags, my research shows that is not the case, especially for title and description tags. You want your page title to support your brand and your marketing, but it must contain your most important keyword(s) also. If you can have it say "Moscow Wedding Videos", you're doing great. If not, do the best you can.

Those of you running Joomla sites will have no problem creating page titles and descriptions. The rest of you will have to dig in a bit to learn the basics of HTML. You'll find your title tag near the top of the page code, within your head tags.

Next, write a nice description tag. This is what will show in most search results pages, beneath your page url. Obviously this needs to be written with marketing in mind, to motivate your prospective customer to click the link and visit your web site. But you must try to work in your most important keyword phrase here - preferably one that matches your page title and will match headings and your content on this particular web page.

Avoid the temptation to fill your keywords meta tag with dozens of keywords. You'll only water down your ranking. Each page should be designed with just one basic keyword phrase. Enter it first, then enter variations and even misspellings, in your keywords meta tag. Separate each keyword phrase with a comma. Besides, if any of the search engines actually ignore any meta tags, this is the one they'll ignore.

Somewhere within your head tags, you may have a script tag with a lot of Javascript code. You may need professional help with this, but it should all be moved to an external include file. Why? Remember, I said that search engines weigh your content partially on how high up on the page it is found. Having a bunch of Javascript code will only make those keywords appear to be lower on your page and get less weight.

You can ignore any server-side scripts though, like PHP or ASP, etc., because these do not show on a rendered web page. If in doubt, browse the page you're working on and look at the source code.

Never try to hide keywords in a font that blends with the page background. Search engine bots are wise to this trick and may penalize you for it.

What you can see

Preferably, the very first thing on the page is an h1 heading tag with your keyword phrase. If you have, say a text menu at the page top, think about moving the code for it to the page bottom, then positioning it at the top with a div tag. Since bots can only see the source code (they do not see web pages the way site visitors do), this will have the effect of making your heading tag appear at the top of the page as far as the bots are concerned.

If an h1 tag is too large, wrong font, wrong color, etc., consider using CSS to alter the tag to the way you want it to appear.

If you can't do this, at least come as close to the idea as you can. Take your main keyword phrase for this page and make it a topic heading with at least a [b] or [strong] tag if you can't do a heading tag.

Use your keyword phrase(s) frequently within your content, but remember you are mainly writing for humans. It does no good to rank high in the search engines if you've turned your content into gibberish.

A good content page will have from 300 to 500 words of which about 2 - 3% will be the keyword phrase (from 6 to 15 uses). Exceed those parameters and you could be penalized.

Many home pages are not laid out in a way that would allow 300 to 500 words with content targeting a single keyword phrase. That's OK. any use of your phrase will be magnified just because it is on the home page. Do be sure to link the phrase(s) to pages that do target them. And try to use text links, rather than image links. If you must have image links, maybe because you have a super-spiffy design, be sure and utilize your alt and longdesc tags on them.

Some home pages may allow a small space for a lead topic - perhaps a paragraph or two before linking off to a "read more" page. If yours is like this, you'll have to weigh the benefits of utilizing the space to highlight your main keyword phrase against marketing needs. There are always trade-offs and decisions to be made.

Internal links

A good trick is to link one of the first non-heading uses of the keyword tag to a page with more detail on that particular topic. Search engine bots love hyperlinks with the text of the keyword phrase leading to a detailed page with loads of content about that keyword phrase. Perhaps the next use of the phrase will be in italics, again indicating to the bots that this is a key topic in this page.

Search engines probably place at least as much weight on having your keyword phrase linked to a page with more content about that phrase, as they would for a nice h1 heading tag. This also lets visitors to your site click on the phrase for more info, instead of having to slog through a page crammed with information on several keyword phrases.

Incoming external links

Incoming external links are considered "gold" by search engine optimizers. By "external", we mean links that come from outside your domain. Search engines will "know" if the link is from a site that is hosted on the same server, and may even read the "whois" database to see if it has the same owner. This means that links coming from domains on different hosting servers, whose registered owners are different than those listed for your domain, will have more weight than links coming from other domains that you own.

You can register with directory sites that will let you place links back to your web site. You can create blogs on third-party sites and post on industry forums where they'll allow links in your "signature". Remember, that every post is a reflection on you and your business, so don't be in such a hurry to get incoming links that you forget to write thoughtfully and with marketing in mind.

Google Adwords is another way to get incoming links, but this is a whole article unto itself, which we'll wade into some other day.

If you do setup a second (or third) website to enhance your catch from the search engines, think about hosting them on different servers and registering them under a relative. But even if you can't do that, they will be effective.

Linking out to external sites will get you some points too, but becareful when sending your visitors elsewhere and always do so with a "target" tag that will open the site in a new window, thus leaving the window with your site, still open.

Getting into the search engines

Just having links coming into your site from other domains, is enough to get you listed in the search engines, eventually. But to feel more confident about getting listed and perhaps to save a day or two, you can enter your domain directly into several search engines' databases..

• Add url to Google
• Add url to Bing

Even doing this, it could be from three to eight weeks before your website actually starts showing up in search engine results, though I've had some sites show in under one week!

If you host with us at SmBizHosting.com, or okJoomlaHosting.com you can ask about our monthly SEO reports that show how you're site is ranking with your keywords against your competitors and get helpful, specific hints, based on your content, on how to improve your rankings.