While developing basic content is a good thing, we must also structure it to our advantage. This is the spice for the search robot's basic text food. They like it spicy!

       Title Tags

       Your HTML pages have a "title" tag on each page, in the header section. An example might look like this, in the HTML code (brackets modified from < > to [ ] for display purposes):

       [TITLE]Park Avenue Condos and Condominiums[/TITLE]

       The search engines assign a high priority to the title of the page, and rightfully so. The title of a page is displayed in the top of the browser window, in the title bar of the browser. Many of the search engines also use the page title in the search results report that they present to the public.

       Unfortunately, the title tags on a lot of Websites are not in good condition. It's a commonly overlooked aspect of page design, yet it's the most important one in terms of search optimization.

       Some Website developers use the exact same page template for an entire site, and, unless it is specifically edited, that template might deliver the exact same text in the title of every page on the site. Often it is just the name of the business, or worse, it may just say "home page".

       If your business name is "Really Hip Manhattan Cribs", and that term is used as the title on every page of the site, then that might help you with the search term "Manhattan Cribs", but not much else. In fact, it's probably detrimental to have repetitive terms in the title tags.

       For every page on your Website, be sure that the title tag represents the intended search terms for that page, and make it attractive from a public readership perspective, because that's what the public might see in real search results. This aspect of optimization cannot be overstressed.

       Other HTML Tags

       Search engines also assign value to other HTML tags on the page. The "headline tag" [h1] tag is just one of them. When a page is presented to the public, the content will often have a headline. The headline is a means for the search engines to further determine the focus of a page.

       It also identifies where the real meat of the page content begins, after getting all the other site navigation elements out of the way. So the content that follows the headline tag should be the main content of that page. For our purposes, it would be the content that you wrote for the search term that you are attracting to that page.

       If you use images, such as a picture of a Park Avenue condo, then you can optimize the HTML "alt" tag for that picture, calling it "Park Avenue condos". The "alt" tag refers to "alternate text", and there's that word text again!

       The alternate text is displayed when you mouse over an image, or if the image display capability of the browser is disabled for faster browsing. A lot of people using dial-up connections do just that, especially as Webmasters load up pages with very large images and videos, under the false assumption that everyone has a broadband connection.

       Out of curiosity, if you want to see how a search engines "sees" your site, then disable your browser image display. Other browsers will be different, but in Internet Explorer, just select Tools/Internet Options from the menu and select the Advanced tab when the box appears. Scroll down to the Multimedia section and click the "Show Pictures" box off. It's revealing.

       Search engines use the image alt tag, especially for image related searches. It can help to identify the content of a photo. Your Webmaster can and should assist with all of this HTML tag optimization.

       In years past, people would load up the header meta tags for the "description" and "keywords" with all kinds of junk words and repeated phrases. They'd do this because the meta tags do not display publicly in a browser. They are hidden.

       As such, the search engines began to downplay those meta tags, due to abuse. Today, the search engines generally reward what is only shown to the public on a page, and not the hidden elements in the header. But don't overlook them. They are still used in some instances. Optimize them.

       Finally, don't overlook your site navigation. Web designers like to use JavaScript to create nice images that change as you mouse rolls over or clicks them. The problem is that the search engines can't follow and index the pages in those links. You have to leave a food trail for that big hungry text monster.

       One way is to be sure that your site has a "site map". A site map lists all the pages of your site, using standard html anchor tags, not JavaScript links. If your site has over 100 pages, then multiple site map pages are in order.

       You want the search engine robot to be able to navigate through your whole site, easily. They can't index what they can't find. It's that simple. Again, your Webmaster can assist with this, and we don't want to bog down in an HTML tutorial here.

       Also, make sure that your Website developer does not use session IDs in the urls of your links. This is a very technical term, but session IDs show up as long strings of digits and letters, and they are used to identify specific site visitors. A session ID url can look like this:

       http://www.domaindrivers.com/?sid=954827a190449012899b2

       These may well prevent your site from being indexed properly, so please contact your Webmaster to discuss and remedy this situation, if you see it.