Search Engine Optimization: What's It All About?

To get her company the visibility it needed, Bylund contracted with Marcus Keith, the director of interactive content for Admax, an integrated marketing solution agency that specializes in “local search” for small businesses. Keith made some quick fixes to Bylund’s Web site, and voilà! “I don’t know what he did, but the phone started ringing and the Web site lit up,” says Bylund.

What Keith did is relatively simple and can be done by any business owner, but he equates search engine optimization to plumbing: “You can do it yourself, and there are lots of places that will show you how to do it, but chances are you’ve got better things to spend your time on.” That said, there are three simple things you want to understand about SEO — even if you don’t do it yourself.

Tagging: “Metatags” are short descriptors that are attached to each page of a Web site. They’re not code, just a simple text explanation of what the page is about. And while a visitor to a Web site cannot see the tags, search engines can.

Metatags are broken into two parts: the title tag and the description. The title tag is highly searchable, but usually limited in length to 100 characters or less, with spaces. For example, the title tag for this page might read “MSN, Technology, Small Business, Search Engine Optimization.” The description that follows gives you more room to work with (as many as 1,000 characters, with spaces) and expands on the title of the page.

Despite the importance of these tags for searchability, many are either poorly constructed or left blank. Some pages are tagged simply “Home Page” or “Index.” This gives a search engine almost nothing to work with. Dramatic results can be achieved by simply changing these tags to include the very words your customers are most likely to search for, such as “flowers Littleton peonies marigolds tulips” in our previous example. Each page’s metatags should be stuffed full of these “keywords” to ensure maximum searchability. 

Architecture: This term sounds more intimidating than it really is. It simply means that you have to maximize your Web site’s architecture to make it search-engine friendly. For example, always include a site map. These maps, while largely useless to human visitors, are good for allowing a search engine to index all of the pages on your Web site with one visit. Also, make sure you include a link back to the home page (and other site sections) at the bottom of each page.

Content: When it comes to content, more is always better for optimal search engine optimization. That’s why Keith recommends that you always make your blog a central and integral part of your company Web site, rather than a separate, standalone site that links back to your main one. “Search engines are like animals looking for food,” says Keith. “You can train them to keep coming back for fresh content, if they know they can depend on it.” Keith also recommends that within the content you are producing you include many of the keywords that you know customers will be searching for. “Remember that you are writing for both humans and machines,” says Keith. “You have to be a little double-minded.”

There are many other ways to improve a Web site’s searchability, but by addressing these three issues you’re likely to see your search results improve in just a couple of months. And the benefits of these improvements won’t be hard to find.

Dan Briody is the author of two books and is the former Executive Editor of CIO Insight Magazine, a leading publication for information technology managers. He is also a frequent contributor on technology topics for Wired, Inc. and Business Week magazines.