Search Engine Optimization: For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Chapter 6. Creating Pages That Search Engines Love

In This Chapter

• Getting your site read

• Knowing what search engines see

• Understanding keyword concepts

• Creating Web pages

• Blocking searchbots

In this chapter, you find out how to create Web pages that search engines really like — pages that can be read and indexed and that put your best foot forward. Before you begin creating pages, I recommend that you read not only this chapter but also Chapter 7 to find out how to avoid things that search engines hate. There are a lot of ways to make a Web site work, and ways to break it, too. Before you get started creating your pages, you should be aware of the problems you may face and what you can do to avoid them.

Note

I'm assuming that you or your Web designer understand HTML and can create Web pages. I focus on the most important search engine-related things you need to know while creating your pages. It's beyond the scope of this book to cover basic HTML and Cascading Style Sheets.

Preparing Your Site

When you're creating a Web site, the first thing to consider is where to put your site. By that, I mean the Web server and the domain name.

Finding a hosting company

Although many large companies place their Web sites on their own Web servers, most small companies don't. They shouldn't do this, in fact, because there's simply no way you can do it anywhere near as cheaply and reliably as a good hosting company can do it. Rather, a hosting company rents space on its servers to other businesses. Although ...