listen up

As part of our on going series, The Web Manual, we continue with Search Engines part 2. Last week, in part 1, we talked about content, content, and more content.

The Search – Part 2

So content is important. Some say the most important. Now lets say you do have great content. but so does your competitor. Uhh ohh, now what? Lets talk about other proactive measures you can take to help your search rankings.
Image alternate content tags.
When inserting your image to a page, most CMS tools will give you the option for an image title. A good and relevant image title can often be the doorway a user takes to your site. What does this look like you ask?

<img src="images/mypageimage.jpg" alt="This is all about the image" />

Links. This one is two parts.
So you have links to all of your pages, and your content is cross linked. Add some relevant content to those links.
-part a, the title.

<a href="mylink.html" title="link title goes here" />

The title helps to identify the link content
-part b, the link content.

<a href="mylink.html" title="link title goes here" />my link content</a/>

Notice the words used for the link. This can also be descriptive, or a keyword.
Being specific here can lead to great search results. Assuming the terms you use for the title and the link content are relevant to the destination pages content.
Site maps
A site map is a simple file that identifies all content in your site, and its hierarchy. A good CMS driven site will be able to auto generate this for you, but you may want to do it manually for ultimate control. Once you have your sitemap, you should also submit the sitemap to google webmaster tools.Yes, any great factor1 site with a CMS can auto generate this sitemap for you. Just ask us how if its not already part of your site.
Incoming links.
This is one of the larger factors that will help your site. An incoming link is anyone that links to you. This can be even better if they follow our notes about link titles and content.
Acquiring incoming links is an entire new post, but the more places linking to your site, the better chances of a good ranking you have. Especially if they are referencing relevant content, providing titles, and so on. Purchasing links is frowned upon by the SEO powers that be, but earning them is okay. I will share more on getting incoming links in the next few weeks.
Have website questions you want addressed? comment here and we’ll add it to the list.