Web Communications
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization or search engine marketing is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a Web site from search engines.
You can optimize your site in the following ways:
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Carefully choose keywords and phrases. These words and phrases will be placed in the "keyword" meta tag of your document (see " Using Keyword Meta Tags"). They should appropriately reflect the content of your site and be words and phrases that your target audience would use to search for your site/content.
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Ensure initial content on the page includes your keywords and phrases. Search engine "spiders" read your page from top to bottom, left to right. Priority should be given to the content you place at the top of your page.
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Write good titles and headings. Search engines oftentimes give extra weight to titles and headlines, so use your keywords and phrases here. When creating page titles and headings, be sure to mark them as such by using structural HTML elements (<h1>, <h2>, <title>, etc.).
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Description meta tag. Although search engines may not use the <meta description> text for search engine rankings, they do use the text as a description for the page. (See " Description Meta Tags").
Using Keyword META tags
Keywords are literally key words -- the search terms you expect people to use to locate your site. Keywords can be single words such as "admissions" or phrases such as "application status" or "distance learning."
Separate each keyword and phrase with a comma and limit the total size to around 256 characters (not words). Put your most important keywords and phrases first. You'll Include the "University of Cincinnati" in your keyword list.
Description META tags
Like the first sentence in a news story, the meta description can keep or lose your potential visitor. This brief description of your site's content gives the searcher important information they need to determine your site's value. Most search engines display the content of the description tag as the site description on the search results page. If there's no meta description to display, most search engines pull the first few lines of text from the site's content and display it on the results page. Put your most important information early in the description since most search engines cut off the display after about 170 characters (200 characters, not words, maximum). It is also important to use complete sentences as well as proper grammar and punctuation.
Using META tags
If you are using the university's content management system (CMS), your META tags were likely set up when your Web site was created. You may edit them at any time. For assistance, contact helpdesk@uc.edu.
If your Web site is outside of the CMS, you have several different options for adding META tags to your site:
Text Editor (such as Notepad)
The description and keywords are placed in quotes; the keyword list is separated by commas. Insert the following META tags between the <head></head> tags into your source code.
<meta name="description" content="Your description goes here">
<meta name="keywords" content="Put your keywords here">
Dreamweaver
- From the Insert menu select Head
- Select Description
- Type the description
- Click OK
- From the Insert menu, select Head
- Select Keywords
- Type the keywords (use commas)
- Click OK
- View your source code
Removing Your Pages from Search Engines
If you change a page name or delete a page from your site, you may find that the search still shows the old URLs, which are now dead links. Though the dead links will gradually disappear, you should be able to get search engines to drop the old URLs by following instructions given by the search engines, such as:
It's also wise to investigate whether other Web sites have links to your Web pages. If they do, ask the editor of the page to update the link to your site.
More Resources
10 Steps to Higher Search Engine Positioning
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