Articles: Marketing & Sales

Help Search Engines Recognize Your Target Keywords

Dave LaLonde is Senior Vice President and Search Engine Optimizer for Auto Credit Express. The ACE Group is a special finance total solutions firm offering their dealership partners entry level and advanced sub prime training, an easy to use online software, and an expert auto sales lead system.

In the January issue I discussed a few of the ingredients of the search engine optimization recipe; how to find high traffic relevant search terms, aka keywords and the importance of your website's title. Last month I added another primary ingredient of the recipe; designing a search engine spider friendly site. This month I will discuss a new ingredient; how to help the search engines recognize which keywords you are targeting.

Many web designers, including myself, use meta data within the source code of a web page to display the search terms they are targeting. If you are using Internet Explorer you can view the source code of any web page by opening the page in your browser and selecting View, then Source from the top menu toolbar. Within the first handful of lines you will most likely see HTML code similar to:

<meta name="keywords" content="keyword1, keyword2, …" />

In the past, this was the standard method to tell the search spider which words were relevant to your site. Today, however, most search engines ignore the Meta keyword data. As part of the algorithm used to determine the words relevant to your site search engines consider the anchor text and alt text of the links leading to your web page.

LINK TYPES

Text Links & Anchor Text
Anchor text is the clickable text phrase within a text link. For example, in the text link Click Here, "Click Here" is the link's anchor text.

Image Links & Alt Text
Alt text is alternative text phrases attached to images. They are viewable only if the web surfer mouses over the image or if the surfer has images turned off, as is often the case with the visually impaired and those with extremely slow internet connections. For example, on many websites if you place your mouse over the logo you will see the text "Home" appear. "Home" is the alt text.

LINK SOURCES

There are two sources of links that lead to your web pages. They are internal links from other pages within your site and external links from other websites.

Internal Links
Almost every sub page within a site has a link that leads back to the home page. This is a good practice. To accomplish this, a majority of web designers place a text link with "Home" as the anchor text or a logo image link with "Home" as the alt text. To see the importance of internal links, anchor text, and website titles go to Google and search for "welcome to home". You will see that there are 2.43 billion results that Google found relevant for this search string. There are few three word combinations that return more relevant results. The reason for this is simple. As I mentioned in a previous article, millions of sites waste valuable real estate in their website title by starting with the word "Welcome to" and billions use the anchor text "Home" in the link that leads back to their home page. In other words, these sites are telling the search engine that the words "Welcome to" and "Home" are relevant keywords for their site.

To see the importance of image alt text search for "home" in the Google's image section. You will see 9.6 million image results that Google found relevant for this search string. Most of the images are non related graphics used as an image link within a site to guide users back to the home page. All of the results use the word "Home" to describe the picture in the images alt text. So, if every link back to your home page uses the anchor text "Home" or a logo image link without alt text or an alt text of "Home" I hope "home" is one of the keywords you are targeting – because that's what you are telling the spider.

External Links
External links are even more significant. To demonstrate the power of external links and their anchor text, search Google for "miserable failure". At the time of this writing the top two relevant results were:

George W. Bush
Michael Moore

Neither of the above web pages target the keyword "miserable failure" in their content or internal link anchor text; in fact, neither page has that keyword in it at all. Google deemed the pages as relevant because adversaries of the above parties have used a technique called "Google Bombing" and placed thousands of links to those web pages with the anchor text of "miserable failure".

RECOMMENDATIONS

Internal Links
On your site, you or someone at your store has total control of the internal link anchor text used to jump from page to page. Take a look at your site; give the search spider a sneak preview before they visit a page by including the keywords of the link's destination page in the anchor text. If this is visually unacceptable or if your site is loaded with image links, you could add the keywords to the images alt text or consider placing a small breadcrumb navigation bar with your keywords in the anchor text at the top or bottom of the page.

Example of a top Breadcrumb Navigation Bar on the Loan Application Page:
You Are Here:
John Doe Ford Detroit > Auto Financing > Sub Prime > Loan Application

Example of a bottom Breadcrumb Navigation Bar on the Loan Application Page:
Back to:
John Doe Ford Detroit > Auto Financing > Sub Prime

In addition to inserting keyword rich anchor text into your site, breadcrumb navigation helps visitors jump up to higher level pages without having to hit the back button numerous times. It also helps visitors that entered your site from a doorway page other than the home page to find their way.

External Links
As is the case with George W. Bush and Michael Moore, you will have less control of the anchor text used in the external links that lead to your site. If are paying for a directory listing, however, most web portals will let you suggest the anchor text as long as you keep it short and relevant. I would recommend that whenever you pay for a directory listing include the name of the nearest major metropolitan market and the word "dealership" for example;

Instead of suggesting
JohnDoeFord.com as your link Anchor Text,

Add a few relevant keywords to the listing and suggest
John Doe Ford Dealership Detroit as your link Anchor Text.

One of the best ways to increase traffic to the sub prime financing page is to increase overall traffic to your main website. Using the two techniques described above by themselves will not automatically make your site rise in the top results for relevant high traffic search terms. They are only a couple of ingredients in a complex recipe. Imagine trying to bake a cake with only flour and water. The result would be edible but not too appealing. Now put it on a table with several other cakes made with all of the traditional ingredients, and see which cake most people would choose. The search engine makes a similar decision when evaluating which websites to display. In the near future, I will discuss yet another crucial ingredient to the recipe, page content. Until then keep adding ingredients and stirring the batter.

Published in World of Special Finance Magazine
June Issue 2006