Archive for September, 2009

PDF documents provide information to your audience and if used properly they can improve your search engine ranking too. The search engines view the PDF document just like another page of the website. That thirty page website is now thirty-one pages with more content for the search engines to index.

When creating and saving a PDF, make the document name descriptive. If the PDF is about cleaning spilled wine off the rug, name the document cleaning-spilled-wine-off-the-rug.pdf. This will allow the search engines to pick-up all the unique words in the document name. Documents named doc1.pdf or an unusual cryptic name will not help your search engine ranking.

Whenever possible use your keywords in the document name too. That same document could be called cleaning-spilled-wine-off-the-rug-with-ABC-cleaner.pdf. Be creative and if the document has a poorly structured name, rename it!

Sometimes people are searching online for information in a particular state. Do they enter the state abbreviation or the complete state name along with their search words?

Include the state abbreviation and the complete state name with the address on your website. Use the abbreviation in the address on some pages and the complete state name on other pages. This covers two versions and provides more information for the search engines to index.

Along with the two letter postal abbreviation, most states have a standard abbreviation too. The state of California can also be listed as CA or Calif. Sprinkle all three versions on to various pages of your website to feed the search engines.

Go to your favorite search engine and do a search on your business phone number with the area code. Did the search engine results find your website? If the answer is no, your website design requires some changes.

The search should display your website as the number one listing in the search engine results. In addition, there should be a listing of other websites where your business phone number is also displayed.

Your business phone number should be on every page of your website. Sprinkle the phone number in to the content on a few pages too, but don’t go overboard. Also, the phone number should be in real text and not an image. Search engines are looking for text not images to index for their databases.

Do the hyperlinked words on your web page help your search engine ranking?

Try this experiment, go to your favorite search engine and search for the words click here. The search results will show Adobe Reader at the top of the search engine results page. Why does Adobe Reader have the number one ranking when the words click here never appear on the page?

There are numerous websites linking to the Adobe Reader with the hyperlink words click here. The search engines relate those words and the hyperlink to the Adobe Reader page giving it a high ranking and it should be at the top of the list.

The words hyperlinked on your web page do help to influence your search engine ranking. Select you’re hyperlinked words carefully using your unique keywords. If you are targeting a specific area or city use that word as one of the hyperlinked word.

We have all seen websites with the hyperlinked words Click Here. You want to encourage someone to click there, but are those words your best choice?

Use words that will describe the hyperlinked web page. See our customer testimonials would be a better selection of words than click here to see our customer testimonials. If you were linking to a PDF use the actual name of the PDF document as the hyperlinked words.

Also, use carefully researched keywords as the hyperlinked words to improve the search engine ranking. View our plumbing products is a better selection of words than view our products page.