SEO Series | Part 2 Search Engine Compatible

Part two in our series is going to ensure your website is "search engine compatible". Now that we have discussed the keywords and key phrases you are going to use in part one we can actually go into the guts of the website by discussing how to keep search engines happy with your site.

The first area we have to look at is what are the search engines looking at? What makes a search engine dislike you? Search engines have small programs or "scripts" that run called robots. These robots search through your site looking at your "code" and "content". Things that turn robots off are things like pop-ups, an over usage of pictures instead of text or all flash and no text content.

The key to keeping search engine bots happy is simply valuable easy to navigate content. Just be sure to keep your methods ethical and your content valuable. I tell people all the time that most search engines have gotten to the point where if your website truly deserves to be number one in the search result it will be.

Now for those of you that build your own site or have one built the following is for you. Make sure your "meta" tags are all relevant to your content and keywords. Always make sure your internal pages link back to your homepage so bots do not get lost or hit a dead end. Use external CSS whenever possible. If your using flash have a text version available for people without a flash player (iPhone users).

What this all comes down to in a nutshell is - the most important part of your website is how valuable and relevant your content is to the spectrum of visitors you are trying to appeal to. Like I said in step one the search engine world is a giant popularity contest and even if you have a sure fire way to become the most popular site on the net people will never consistently return if your content is no good and remember returning visitors shows Google that your content was worth coming back to.

PS - Our LIVE Real Estate Technology show will be aired Saturday 8pm instead of Sunday 8pm. We will be out of the country starting Sunday morning.

Have a greay day,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online