Basic Search Engine Info Requested

@rocknbilNov 24.2006 — #Linda,

Are the keywords "LOCAL BUFFALO,NY ARTIST" anywhere on your pages?

Search engines index pages by the relevance of keywords contained in them. A search for SEO or optimization will lead you to many authoritative artickes and threads on the subject.

@Bichons9authorNov 24.2006 — #Yes, the phrase is in titles. However, I will refer to topic you suggested again..Thanks.

@rocknbilNov 24.2006 — #Well, here's a few more grains, this is by no means all-encompassing but it's a start.

Although you want the main keywords for your topic in the title, I'm not sure those are the ones you really want. Give some thought to this question: [b]"If were looking for an artist in Buffalo NY, what would I enter for a search?"[/b] I often totally miss this mark myself, but for some it's an easy question. If it's not an easy answer for you, look up your competition, see how they're doing it. I'm not suggesting you steal their keywords, I'm saying see what works and compare with your process.

If it were me, I would be more [i]specific[/i] in yor choice of keywords. Targeted keywords are by far more effective. Your last name search results are a perfect example, there are apparently only three pages with the word Munschauer on them - try the same for Linda!

So a **suggestion** (see "often miss mark," above) for a title tag might be "Linda Munschauer - digital illustrator, acrylic artist, graphic designer, Buffalo New York." This offers the specific terms digital illustrator, graphic designer, and acrylic artist with the associated word buffalo. It's unlikely this would rank well in a search for water buffalo, which is good in your case. Unless part of what you do are images of water buffalo. But I digress.

This also has better human-legibility too - it makes clear and concise sense as a title. Which is a good rule to live by, [i]rich content will naturally contain valuable keywords.[/i]

But the title tag is not enough. if you want to rank WELL on these keywords, you better make sure this pages talks A LOT about digital illustration, graphic design, and acrylic artist, and uses those keywords at least five or six times apiece mixed into regular paragraphs. Don't try any stupid web tricks - like pasting "digital designer" 100 times into a comment or 100 times white text on white background. This may rocket you to #1 for a day, but as you know everyone pays attention to who's #1 - including the people at Google. You will be taken out of their index and many not get back in for a very long time.

Just write good content. Build paragraphs around the keywords, don't try to twist the sentences to work them in. If someone does find your page, it will sound phony and they'll recognize what you're doing and bang . . you're outta there.

It is commonly misunderstood that search engines ignore meta tags. While they often ignore the KEYWORD meta tag due to abuse, the DESCRIPTION meta tag is VERY important. Keep it unique, descriptive, and short. Take the first sentence or two of your content - which should be a terse explanation of the entire page anyway - and put it in the meta tag between the opening and closing head tags, somewhere after your title:

<meta name="description" content="This is the description that turns up in search engine snippets, make it as descriptive and targeted as you can because . . . . ">

[size=1]"Because WHAT?". Precisely, that is what searchers will think seeing your description in SERPS if it's too long. :-)[/size]

DO NOT MINDLESSLY PASTE THE SAME DESCRIPTION INTO ALL PAGES. This is deadly. Make them all unique and descriptive of each page - that is, unless your site is 1000 clones of one page.

Write clean pages. Don't use font tags or deprecated elements, use clean code with CSS for presentation. Validate your code. The text that search engines like to gobble up will be much more digestible to them.

Last is patience. If you don't have rent for next month, SEO won't help you. Although they're getting faster at it, changes you enter today may take up to 6 months to appear in search engines (which is all the more reason to get on the ball, do something TODAY.) Review all your pages for the above, upload them, then set it aside. Check now and then to see if they're bringing you in by looking at the changes you made above, this will tell you if you've been reindexed.

Using the loop between your changes and the results, you can refine this over and over.

How's that for a starter course? ?

@Bichons9authorNov 24.2006 — #Well there is a lot to digest...THANKYOU. A problem might be that I post IMAGES mostly. I do a little "writing" but nothing worth mentioning....Linda

@rocknbilNov 24.2006 — #Sure there is. Don't forget your online bio, or about me page. As for the galleries, what were you thinking when you painted/snapped that image? And the ALT tag of an image is also considered content.

<img src="yourimage.jpg" alt="This is an image I painted out of the rage I feel toward my parents.">

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