Help System Search

Your home page is the most important page to focus on for your Search Engine Optimization. Below are some more advanced topics to focus on when optimizing your site for the search engines.

Key Phrase
First determine the key phrase you want your site to appear for when typed in a search. Remember to choose a good key phrase for your Home Page, rather than a generic phrase that many better optimized sites are already using.


TAGS
You can see the tag section at the bottom of your Edit Home Page in the Meta information. Here are some tips for your tags.


Title Tag
The title tag is very important, and is almost always the heading the search engine chooses for each of its listings. This is where you should place your key phrase. Try to make this phrase unique and specific to your site.

If you have a large title tag, keep your key phrase close to the beginning and you can also place it somewhere in the middle.


Meta Description Tag
The Meta Description tag is often used as the description of your site. Entering a description may help your SEO.

The best way to optimize this is to keep it short and include the key phrase right in the beginning of the tag.


Meta Keyword Tag
This often does not affect your rankings much. Some search engines still use it and it may be worth putting some key words in here.



URL
This is the web address for your site, or any specific page you want to index. It is found in your address bar.

URL Structure
Long URLs are harder to index, so you may want to register a domain name and mask the URL.



LINKS
Linking to quality sites can help your SEO

The most important thing with links is to keep them relevant. For instance, if you have a baseball site, links to baseball related sites will most affect your rankings. If many baseball related sites are linking to your site, your SEO will be greatly improved.


Site Age
The age of your site affects your rankings. The longer your site is online, the better your SEO. It is best to pick a good domain right form the start and keep that domain.


Load Time
It is best to keep you load time quick. If you have several large images or videos or too much content on your Home Page it can affect your load time.



DON'TS -  RANKING  MISTAKES

Hidden Text
Make sure that all of your text is visible. Make sure that the text is visible against the background (Layout & Media > Colors)


Too Many Keywords
Do not excessively list the keywords and phrases you want your site to come up for on your Home Page.


Duplicated Pages
Do not repeat the same data over and over, or create multiple pages with the same content. Taking pages from other sites can have the same effect.


Cloaking
Cloaking is when you display different information to the search engines than the actual content of your pages. This can get you in trouble with the search engines.


Frames (including iFrames)
Frames may significantly reduce your chances of rankings. It is better to copy and paste the content into your pages. When using Internet Explorer on a PC, you can press the "Clean HTML" button in the text options to strip access formatting when pasting into your pages.