Other criteria to consider
In addition to the four main elements you should plan to include on your site, there are a few others.
For example, the body text on your web site will be examined by the crawler that indexes your site.
Body text should contain enough keywords to gain the attention of the crawler, but not so many that
it seems the site is being “stuffed’ with such words.Alternative tags for pictures and links are also important. These are the tags that might appear as a
brief description of a picture or graphic on a web site that fails to display properly. The alternative
tags — called alt tags — display a text description of the graphic or picture, so that even if the actual
image doesn’t appear, there’s some explanation of what should be there. Alt tags are a good place to
include additional keywords.Understanding Web-Site Optimization
Web-site optimization is all about creating a site that is discoverable by search engines and search
directories. It sound simple enough, but there are many aspects of site optimization to consider, and
not all of them are about the keywords, links, or HTML tagging of your site.Does hosting matter?
That question comes up frequently when a company or individual is designing a web site. Does it
matter who hosts your site? The answer is no, but that’s not to say that domain hosting is unimpor-
tant. Elements of the hosting have a major impact on how your site ranks in search results.One of the biggest issues that you’ll face with domain hosting is the location of your hosting com-
pany. If you’re in the United States and you purchase a domain that is hosted on a server in England,
your search engine rankings will suffer. Geographically, search engine crawlers will read your site as
being contradictory to your location. Because many search engines serve up results with some ele-
ment of geographical location included, this contradiction could be enough to affect your ranking.The length of time for which you register your domain name could also affect your search engine
ranking. Many hackers use throw away domains, or domain names that are registered for no more
than a year, because they usually don’t even get to use the domain for a full year before they are shut
down. For this reason some search engines have implemented ranking criteria that give priority to
domains registered for longer periods. A longer registration also shows a commitment to maintain-
ing the web site.Domain-naming tips
The question of what to name a web site is always a big one. When selecting a name, most people
think in terms of their business name, personal name, or a word or phrase that has meaning for
them. What they don’t think about is how that name will work for the site’s SEO. Does the name
have anything at all to do with the site, or is it completely unrelated?39
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