DigitalWork Newsletter: Issue 4
Search Engines Part 2 -- Tips To Improve Your Listing With Search Engines

It is not enough to merely submit your web site to the search engines. If your web site is not optimized you will experience difficulties getting your web site listed within the search engines.

Based upon current trends, we have compiled some tips to improve your chances of getting your web site listed within the search engines. In addition, DigitalWork offers a suite of Submit to Search Engine products to help increase your web site traffic and help you avoid common mistakes. As a TotalWebSolution customer, if you would like to sign up for our Submit to Search Engine service, we will give you a $30 discount off any of our submission plans. To receive your discount, visit the Submit to Search Engine section of our web site, use the promotion code "DW Newsletter" when placing your order.

Search Engine Tips:

• Keywords -- Keywords are at the heart of the ranking consideration; therefore, the first step in optimizing a site is to make sure the correct keywords are selected. The best way to determine your keywords is to imagine yourself as one of your customers or prospects. How do you think these people will search for sites like yours? What keywords do you think they will enter into the search engines? When developing your list of keywords, you should first start by consider all of the possible keywords your customers and prospects may use. Once you have a complete list, you can then rank the importance of they keywords to determine which are the most important to your company and deserve extra consideration in your optimization. Send DigitalWork your finalized list and we will update the keywords on your site for you.

• Site Text -- One of the most neglected optimization techniques is the inclusion of keywords in your site text. This is the most likely method to generate a substantial increase in your search engine ranking because many search engine developers realize that web owners can purposely alter other aspects of their site in order to achieve a higher ranking. However, the text that they display on their site must make sense to their visitors, so chances that this text is relevant to the purpose of the site is much greater than in other locations. We suggest you incorporate your keywords in the 'Home' page text of your web site.

• Site Title -- The Site Title tag appears at the top of all web browsers. This tag is used by pretty much every search engine and is considered one of the most effective Meta Tags for it is used for conveying the theme of your web page to the search engines. Not only is the structure and content of the Title tag used by the search engines when calculating your web page's relevance, but it is also displayed in most search engine results pages. It's our opinion that the best Title tag should be as few words as possible and include not only your company name but also a few "key" words.

• Meta Description -- The Meta Description tag does not carry much weight with search engines, in fact some search engines ignore this tag all together. However, since some search engines do list this summary on their search results page we recommend that your Meta Description contain a brief description of your company.

• Domain Name -- It's best to have a top-level domain name for your web site. A "top-level" domain name is of the format www.websitename.com; some web site developers will provide you with a "free" sub-domain (i.e., www.websitename.iworksweb.com). Search engines will rank sites with sub-domains lower than sites with relevant top-level domain names. All TotalWebSolution web sites come with a top-level or vanity domain name. If your site is still listed under a sub-domain, we would be happy to make to make this change for you.

• Link Exchange -- It's important that you get your web site address listed to other sites. These links will bring traffic to your site, and help your site establish a credible reputation that will boost your search engine rankings. We recommend you submit your site to directories, trade links with related web sites, and look for other sites that have resource directories.

We understand that optimizing and submitting a web site to search engines can be tedious and time-consuming. For additional information on optimizing your site or to take advantage of our special offer, please contact the DigitalWork Customer Care Department (for DigitalWork contact information, please visit www.digitalwork.com/contact.html).

Featured Web Site
Site Pro News
www.sitepronews.com

Some material for this newsletter was taken from the "Site Pro News" web site. As stated in our last issue, we like to dedicate this area of the Newsletter to DigitalWork customer sites; however, since "Site Pro News" contains a lot of valuable information about search engines, we feel it's appropriate to mention them again and suggest you take the time to visit their site.