Optimizing your Web pages for improved placement in the search engines is a must. While each search engine uses its own proprietary algorithms for ranking results, there are several steps you can take to improve your site's findability. It is free and gives your Web site a better chance of being found by prospective students interested in your programs. The optimization process will make it easier for prospective students to find information that is relevant to them when using search engines such as Google or Yahoo, as well as the search at www.asu.edu.
| 58% | |
| Yahoo | 23% |
| Microsoft sites (includes MSN) | 10% |
| Time Warner/AOL | 5% |
| Ask | 4% |
There are several steps to optimizing your Web pages for the search engines:
- Determine the keywords/phrases that are used to find programs such as yours. You may think you know what people search for, but you may be wrong. Many Web sites are optimized for the wrong phrases. To check for popular phrases, use a free "Term Suggestion" tool available from Trellian. Trellian offers a free service and an enhanced paid service. The free version should give you enough data to choose your keywords.
If you aren't using Google Analytics, then you should start. . This tool allows you to analyze activity on your pages. Another new tool for comparing multiple terms is Google Trends .
Pick the most frequently searched for phrases relevant to your program. It is best to optimize for only one or two phrases per Web page.
- Update your title tag to include a unique title specific to that page.
- Update your keywords tag to include the most relevant words or phrases related to each page. You should separate words and/or phrases by commas. The keywords tag does not carry as much weight as it used to but it is still a good idea to use it, especially if you have an internal site search such as www.asu.edu.
- Update your description tag to include the same relevant words and phrases. Some engines will use the description you provide as the results description.
- Update the page content so that your most important phrase is in the text AT LEAST four times. We know this may seem excessive but you need to find a way to do this. This may be kludgy; use common sense. If your main competitor includes the phrase five times in their content or on the page, then try to include the phrase six times. To easily see how many times another page includes a phrase – do a search on Google for the phrase. When the results are displayed, do not click on the link to the site, click on the “cached” link. Then you will see the phrase highlighted everywhere it is used on the page.
The following example is from the ASU Online Web site, with the phrase that has been optimized is "online degrees" and "online courses."
- Hyperlink the important phrases to other pages in your Web site.
- Create titles for these links. This improves your ranking in Yahoo and possibly Google. This also helps improve accessibility.
- Any image on the page must have an alt-image tag associated with it for accessibility. This may also improve searchability.
- Update your content regularly. The search engines’ algorithms consider how often a page is updated when ranking the pages.
<title>ASUonline - Online Degrees, Online Courses, and Distance Learning Programs from Arizona State University</title><meta name="keywords" content="online course, web course, online class, web class, asu online, asuonline, web instruction, online courses, web courses, distance learning, computer courses, adult learners"/><meta name="description" content="Online degrees, courses, and certificates from Arizona State University"/><head>
<title>ASUonline - Online Degrees, Online Courses, and Distance Learning Programs from Arizona State University</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="online course, web course, online class, web class, asu online, asuonline, web instruction, online courses, web courses, distance learning, computer courses, adult learners"/>
<meta name="description" content="Online degrees, courses, and certificates from Arizona State University" />
</head>
Now look at the text on the home page. You will see that the most important phrases or words are indicated by red outlines.
<a href="catalog/index.asp" title="Online Degrees">online catalog</a>
Optional Steps
If you are optimizing an existing Web site, you will not need to submit the Web site or Web page to the search engines as your Web site is already being spidered by the engines. If you are launching a new Web site, you will need to add your url to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl/, Yahoo at http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html, and MSN at http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx. It is also beneficial to add your site to the Yahoo directory at https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/reference/instructions. This is different than the Yahoo web search. The cost is $299 and it will help with your organic search rankings at Google, Yahoo and MSN. One last directory to submit to is the Open directory at http://www.dmoz.org/add.html. It is free and is the web’s oldest directory. All the major search engines still pull results from this directory.