One of the most common misconceptions about SEO is that it should be implemented after a web site has been built. It can be, but it’s much harder. A better option is to consider SEO even before you begin to build your web site, if that’s at all possible. It may not be. But if that’s the case, you can still implement SEO strategies in the design of your site; it will just require a lot more work than building it in at the beginning. Know your target Before you even start contemplating how to build your web site, you should know in what types of search engines it’s most important for your site to be ranked.

Search engines are divided into several types, beyond the primary, secondary, and targeted search engines that you learned about in Chapter 2. In addition, search engine types are determined by how information is entered into the index or catalog that’s used to return search results. The three types of search engines are:

• Crawler-based engines: To this point, the search engines discussed fall largely into this category. A crawler-based search engine (like Google) uses an automated software agent (called a crawler) to visit, read, and index web sites. All the information collected by the crawler is returned to a central repository. This is called indexing. It is from this index that search engine results are pulled. Crawler-based search engines revisit web pages periodically in a time frame determined by the search engine administrator.
• Human-powered engines: Human-powered search engines rely on people to submit the information that is indexed and later returned as search results. Sometimes, human powered search engines are called directories. Yahoo! is a good example of what, at one time, was a human-powered search engine. Yahoo! started as a favorites list belonging to two people who needed an easier way to share their favorite web site. Over time, Yahoo! took on a life of its own. It’s no longer completely human-controlled. A newer search engine called Mahalo (www.mahalo.com) is entirely human-powered, however, and it’s creating a buzz on the Web.
• Hybrid engine: A hybrid search engine is not entirely populated by a web crawler, nor entirely by human submission. A hybrid is a combination of the two. In a hybrid engine, people can manually submit their web sites for inclusion in search results, but there is also a web crawler that monitors the Web for sites to include. Most search engines today fall into the hybrid category to at least some degree. Although many are mostly populated by crawlers, others have some method by which people can enter their web site information.

It’s important to understand these distinctions, because how your site ends up indexed by a search engine may have some bearing on when it’s indexed. For example, fully automated search engines that use web crawlers might index your site weeks (or even months) before a human-powered search engine. The reason is simple. The web crawler is an automated application. The human-powered search engine may actually require that all entries be reviewed for accuracy before a site is included  in search results.

In all cases, the accuracy of search engine results will vary according to the search query that is used. For example, entries in a human-powered search engine might be more technically accurate, but the search query that is used will determine if the desired results are returned.

Page elements

Another facet of SEO to consider before you build your web site is the elements needed to ensure that your site is properly indexed by a search engine. Each search engine places differing importance on different page elements. For example, Google is a very keyword-driven search engine; however, it also looks at site popularity and at the tags and links on any given page.

How well your site performs in a search engine is determined by how the elements of your page meet the engine’s search criteria. The main criteria that every search engine looks for are the site text (meaning keywords), tags — both HTML and meta tags — site links, and the site popularity.

Text

Text is one of the most important elements of any web site. Of particular importance are the keywords within the text on a page, where those keywords appear, and how often they appear. This is why keyword marketing has become such a large industry in a relatively short time. Your keywords make all the difference when a search engine indexes your site and then serves it up in

search results.

Keywords must match the words and phrases that potential visitors will use when searching for your site (or for the topic or product that’s listed on your site). To ensure that your keywords are effective, you’ll need to spend some time learning which keywords work best for your site. That means doing keyword research (which you learn more about in Chapter 5) and testing the keywords that you do select to see how effective they really are.

Tags

In search engine optimization, two kinds of tags are important on your web site: meta tags and HTML tags. Technically, meta tags are HTML tags, they just appear in very specific places. The two most important meta tags are the keyword tag and the description tag. The keyword tag occurs at the point where you list the keywords that apply to your web site.

A keyword tag on a search engine optimization page might look something like this:

”<meta name=”keywords” content=”SEO, search engine optimization, page rank”>”

The description tag gives a short description of your page. Such a tag for the search engine optimization page might look like this:

”<meta name=”description” content=”The ultimate guide to search engine optimization!”>”

Not all search engines take meta tags into consideration. For that reason, you site should use both meta tags and other HTML tags. Some of the other HTML tags that you should include on your website are the title tag, the top (or H1) heading tags, and the anchor tags.

The title tag is the tag that’s used in the title of your web site. This tag will appear like this:

”<Title>Your Title Here</Title>”

Once you’ve tagged your site with a title tag, when a user pulls the site up, the title that you entered will appear at the very top of the page if the user is using an Internet Explorer browser (IE) earlier than IE7, as shown in Figure 3-1. In IE7 and the Firefox browser, the title will appear on the browser tab, shown in Figures 3-2 and 3-3.

High-level headings (H1s) are also important when a crawler examines your web site. Your keywords should appear in your H1 headings, and in the HTML tags you use to create those headings. An H1 tag might look like this:

”<h1>High-Level Heading</h1>”

Anchor tags are used to create links to other pages. An anchor tag can point users to another web page, a file on the Web, or even an image or sound file. You’re probably most familiar with the anchor tags used to create links to other web sites. Here’s what an anchor tag might look like:

”<a href=”http://www.targetwebsite.com/”>Text for link</a>”