What does it mean to optimize my website?

To ensure that your site works well with the search engines, it is important that your site is setup properly. You need to make sure that your site keywords and phrases are displayed in the places that search engines look at when indexing your website.

Review the areas listed below...

Website Content - most important!

• The visible content on your pages is the important area that search engines look at.
• Place your highest priority keywords and phrases in the content area of your pages.
• Your home page needs to include your most important phrases.
• Keywords need to be placed near the top of your content area.

Page/Browser Titles

• The browser title is displayed in the title bar of your browser window.
• Setup your global browser title
  1. Edit your site
  2. Click the settings button
  3. Edit the global browser title. It should include your site name along with a couple of your top keyword phrases
• Setup page specific browser titles for specialized pages
  1. Go to the page list
  2. Click the properties link by a page
  3. Enter the the page specific keywords
  4. Page specific keywords are displayed right after your global keywords in the browser title

Page Names

• Search engines will look at the names of your pages and links when indexing your site.
• Go to the page list and click the properties link by a page to change the page name.
• Keep your page names short.

Links on your site

• Create text links on your site that take visitors to important pages.
• Use your keywords in the text links.
• For example, if you had information on televisions...Instead of creating a link called "click here" or "product specials", you could create a link called "Plasma Television Specials"

The importance of external links to your website

• Search engines rely heavily on links to determine the relevance/ranking of your website.
• You want to have other websites link to your site. Not only will this generate traffic from those websites, but it will also increase the ranking of your website.
• Links from websites that are very popular and related to your keywords and phrases will give you the biggest boost in search rankings.