Creating a body of articles on your web site is one of the
http://cdn.is3.com/images/banners/sz/stopzilla-bug-300x250.jpgbest ways to get your site noticed by search engine spiders -
and getting the search engine spiders to notice your web
site is the best way to get it seen by your prospective
customers.
Ideally, if you can get your web site into the first
five pages of search results on the major search engines,
you’ve got a steady stream of traffic to your web site – and
a steady stream of traffic is what you need to market your
products. The closer to the first page you register, the more
likely you are to get visitors to your site. If you don't
register on the first page, chances that you will get visitors
from search engine results drop off quickly, and after five
pages, you can probably forget it.
So how do you get your web site up into those crucial first
five – or better yet, first two – pages? Understanding how
search engine spiders read and register the content in your
articles will help you choose and place your private label
articles to best effect.
Internet Spiders
Search engines are built around the technology of spiders –
little software programs that follow links throughout a
website, and take note of several factors. The way that your
articles are structured, what keywords appear in them,
where they appear and how often they appear throughout
your web site are all key factors that get recorded when a
search engine spider crawls through your web site. Other
factors include which sites you link to, and what other web
sites link to your pages. All this information, plus historical
data about your page, is put together to determine how high
your page ranks in a given keyword search.
To properly take advantage of what internet spiders can do
for you, you need to select your articles with the search
engine spiders in mind. It’s important to select the proper
keywords – the ones that customers would naturally choose
to use to find you and your site specifically. For instance, if
you're a florist in the Bronx who focuses on weddings, the
articles that you choose to publish on your web site could
include “Bronx florist”, “wedding flowers”, “bridal bouquets”
and “Bronx wedding florist”. The idea is to use key words
and phrases in your articles that your customers would use
in searching for someone that sells what you do.
Once you've determined what your keywords are, you need
to place them properly. In your web page, there are specific
places where a spider will give your keywords most weight.
For Google search spiders (and for most of the rest of the
industry), spiders focus on words in:
 Titles
 Subtitles
 Metatags (including keywords and description)
 Linked text
Google spiders look at other things as well (we think
including bullets, table headings, and image text tags) but
the specifics of what they look for are a closely-guarded
secret. After the four we're certain of, most webmasters
experiment with different methods. Every SEO-optimization
expert uses a slightly different method.
We also know that Google spiders seek out keywords in text
like articles, and pay attention to where those keywords are.
If you put all your keywords in your first paragraph, for
instance, you'll get a lower ranking than if you had put the
same number of keywords throughout your text; but
keywords in the first and last paragraph of text seem to
have a little more weight than those in the middle.
Clearly, optimizing keywords is a complex and confusing
topic. But you don't have to get it perfect if you have the
right keywords and if you're focusing on a niche market like
you should.
Optimizing Your Site
Outside your website, we know that the number of links to
you from other websites does raise your ranking, and the
frequency with which you put fresh content on your site
(especially the home page) also affects it. Sites that update
at least once a month seem to perform better in the Google
listings dance, so it’s evident that having a body of relevant
articles to which other webmasters will link, and updating
that content with new articles frequently is a key factor in
getting your web site noticed by the Google spiders.
Inside the website, there are a several things you can do to
ensure that your website gets the best ranking possible. The
most important of these is the placement of the keywords
you’ve selected. Your keywords should be used in metatags
on EVERY page in your web site – specifically in the title,
description and keywords. In addition, be certain to use your
keywords naturally in ALT tags on your images. You might,
for example, use the ALT text “Bridal bouquet designed by
Bronx wedding florist” for a photo of a bride carrying a
bouquet. Use headings in your articles rather than simply
bolding text – it appears that spiders pay attention to H1-H6
tags. Including a site map linked to your first page – and
linking to every other page on your site – will ensure that
the spider finds all of your pages and articles with keywords
in them.
Be certain with a new website that you submit it to the
search engines. If you don't, and if no one else has linked to
your website, the search engines can't find it! They must
have either a submission request or a link from another site
to you in order to find you online. Obviously, the more links
to your web site from others, the better the chances of your
site being found. The best way to make sure that you have
plenty of incoming links is to provide up-to-date, frequently
updated articles that are relevant to your web site’s
purpose. By providing a healthy body of private label articles
that offer information that people want, you’ll be
encouraging other webmasters to point their readers at your
web site with links to your articles – and waving a big flag at
the spiders to stop here and read!