KEYWORD ADVICE

Those who have placed an advert with us, will have the page it links to (and the link itself) listed in the same way other search engines do and spidered on a regular basis. The following advice is mainly for web pages, but the principles can be applied to adverts on web pages as well.

Making a page that gets noticed on most Search Engines can require some skill, but with ProFindSearch we have made this as simple as possible.

As we are not the only Search Engine on the Internet, it is important to design a page that is attractive to all.

Meta Tags, such as the title, keywords and description, should contain words that are relevant to the product, service or information you are promoting on the main part of your page (the content). Make them sound interesting and inviting, as these appear on most Search Engines that display your site.

Unfortunately, some site owners make the mistake of repeating important keywords in the hope that this will place them higher in the listings. With some Search Engines this works (at least for a while), but it is also called spamming and almost every Search Engine will penalize you for this if discovered (even taking your page off their list completely). Please do not be tempted to follow this route. As a guide, try to avoid mentioning a keyword more than three times (in the Meta tags).

Whilst the Meta Tags are important, the content on your page is the area that requires your strongest attention. Again, a good percentage of your important keywords should be found in the content, but try not to distort the message you are giving by overdoing it!

Although pictures look nice, Search Engines are unable to share their beauty. Your page is just a mass of letters and numbers to a SE spider, which will only see your image as a name. You should also remember that some images can take a long time to appear on your page and quite often a visitor will leave before the picture has arrived! This applies to flash animation as well, it can look great, but often takes too long to load. By all means use images, but use them sparingly and avoid pictures that take a long time to load.

If the product or service you are offering is not unique (like gifts, software, games and so on), it is best not to concentrate on these individual words. If you search on almost any Search Engine for the word "Gifts" you will immediately see the problem. Trying to get your site noticed for words like this is much like chasing rainbows and best avoided.

Concentrate on promoting an area of your product or service that is less common on the internet, you can experiment with this by testing a few keywords on various Search Engines and see how many pages are listed in the results. If your site sells candles (for example), the odds of someone finding your site with just this keyword is very slim indeed, So you need to provide some information that makes this more unique. If you sell candles that have a "space" theme, you could try promoting the keywords "Space Shuttle Candles" or "Astronaut Candles" for example.

Most experienced searchers realize that single keyword searches will produce a large amount of pages in their results, and many now use multiple words when trying to find something (anything from three to eight words).

Location can also help you. Many people are looking for a product or service in a specific area (Country, City, Town etc.), so if you mention your own location, this could be a big advantage!

Try and provide a reasonable amount of information on your page (more than one sentence!), but make sure it is interesting and relevant.

Whilst spelling mistakes (and grammar) may not affect your position greatly on some Search Engines, it can certainly have an effect on your potential customers. Always try and get someone to "proof-read" your work before going live. A badly written page can lose you customers.

This also applies to the design of the page itself, a badly designed page will not provide the image you need.

Always try and put yourself in the position of a potential customer and imagine what they would like to see. Try and guess what words they would use to find your product or service. Please also remember that visitors come from all over the world and may not share your passion in seeing patriotic flags appearing on the page or messages saying how wonderful your country is. This may be fine for local business, but it could turn others away.

Thankfully, a page can be "fine-tuned" at any time, so if you don't have too much success with your first attempt, keep trying!

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