OmegaNet tries to build into our websites features that optimize them for the search engines. Search Engine Optimizaton (SEO) is a specialized activity, as shown by the fact that there are companies that do nothing else. OmegaNet doesn’t claim to be expert in SEO. In this post, we won’t be looking at things like “PageRank Sculpting”. Below we have outlined some basic, important considerations for SEO.

comScore Search Rankings 2014
Google Sites	67.3%
Microsoft Sites	19.4%
Yahoo	10.0%
Ask	2.0%
AOL	1.3%

When talking about Search Engines, we are really talking about Google since, in 2014, 67.3% of all searches were on a Google site (source). A “Google site” might be the organic search engine (google.com), Google Maps, Google+, YouTube.Com, etc. Second was Microsoft sites, which include the Bing search engine, MapQuest, msn.com, etc. After that came Yahoo (technically a directory which gets its data from Bing), Ask, and, bringing up the rear, AOL with just 1.3%. Because Google is the 800-pound gorilla, SEO is really about optimizing for Google.

MYTHS AND MISTAKES
First, we need to dispel some myths. Google is not like the phone book, where you’re automatically in the book if you have a Ma Bell account. Google does use “spiders” – software that automatically “crawls” the entire web – however, you have to jockey for position with the other more than a billion websites out there.

Often people are surprised that their site is not on the first page of an organic (free) Google search result. But how many total results were there to your search? How many sites are there which legitimately have the same words on their sites? What search term did you use? Different search terms yield different results.

Also, no SEO company can guarantee your placement on Google, or get you a permanent place on Google, unless you pay for pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. By the same token, no SEO company can submit your site to “1500 search engines”. There are not that many to start with, and anyone who promises that is using an automated process that won’t be accepted by any search engine.

THE ONLY THING YOU CAN COUNT ON IS CHANGE
Google changes its search algorithms from time to time, so web designers and SEO specialists have to adapt as well. The changes Google makes are often responses to people who try to game the system to get good search results, for example, by listing keyword meta tags or including tiny, white type at the bottom of the home page that has nothing to do with the actual site content but are popular search terms. For this reason, Google demoted meta-keywords several years ago. However establishing keywords for your site is still VERY important, so you present a coherent message that Google can classify. Here is a list of six things Google looks for, plus a bonus point for good measure.

1. Title Tag: The Title is the title of a page that appears on the top tab of the web browser. Ideally the title of each page should be different. OmegaNet’s Page Builder allows you to give your pages a title and OmegaNet can put code in place to display that code as part of the title automatically, or a script can be created to display a custom title for each page (The Title in the Page Builder is different from the name that you give to the page when you create it. See the Page Builder instructions). OmegaNet will ask you for a generic title that will probably include your tagline if you have one. a tagline is like
   

   ACME Imports: Bringing The World to Your Door

   But if you prefer, you can supply exact titles for each page. Your title(s) should include your keywords (more on this later) 

   NOTE: On wholesale sites, this applies only to your public pages (before log in). Search engines are not allowed to “crawl” the member pages – those after log in – because then your wholesale prices would be visible to the wide world.

2. URL: The URL (Universal Resource Locator) is the address of the page found in the address bar of your browser. This is something OmegaNet is working to change, because our URLs are not the most friendly to Google. We do have a method of converting our CAMEO EZ^© URLs, i.e.
   

   http://www.yourdomain.com/Scripts/PublicSite/?template=About”

   …into something more Google friendly, like

   http://www.yourdomain.com/about-us/

   If we haven’t done this for your site you can request it for no extra cost. If your site is attached (meaning OmegaNet doesn’t have your domain and you are simply linking from http://www.yourdomain.com to http://yourname.cameoez.com) we recommend creating a subdomain such as http://wholesale.yourdomain.com. This must be done in the DNS zone file by whoever hosts your DNS – probably your web host, then OmegaNet needs to add your subdomain to our domain records.

3. Meta Description: There are several meta tags that do various things. They are located in the <HEAD> section of every web page and are not visible to the user of the site, unless they “view source”. As was mentioned above, Keywords has been demoted in importance because of abuse, but the Description is still important to Google. However, thinking in terms of Keywords to describe your site is still valuable, because Google is still looking for keywords, just not in the meta keywords. So when you write a meta description for your page, you need to include your keywords. That way Google finds many of the same keywords in your Title and your Meta Description. Like the Title, OmegaNet can program your site to have a custom description on each page if you request it. And the “third time’s the charm” concerning the next point.
4. Body of the Web Page: You also need to make the text on your pages “keyword rich”, so that Google finds many of the same words in your Title, Meta Keywords and in the Body of the page. That gives great confirmation to Google that your website is what it says it is and that improves your ranking. It is a big mistake to use only pictures on your home page. The search engines are looking for WORDS that it can read and index, so you need to have text on your pages and that text should ideally be “keyword rich”. Plus, for best results, the keywords on your page should match the keywords in your Title and Meta Descriptions.
5. H1 Tags: In HTML code, the <H1> tag (“Heading 1”) denotes the largest heading on the page. The heading tags look like this:
   

   Heading 1

   Heading2

   Heading3

   Heading 4

   Including <h1> tags in your PageBuilder pages is easy. Just select H1 from the dropdown that defaults to “Paragraph”. Google likes h1 tags because that tells it what is the most important thing on the page.

6. Images: Another HTML tag can contribute to SEO: the <img> tag, which displays an image. The image name should be descriptive of the image content. This does present some problems for the way OmegaNet has traditionally done things. Namely, in our slide shows, we like to use “slide1.jpg”, “slide1.jpg”, etc., so you can easily upload/overwrite previous images with new slides without changes to the underlying code for the slideshow. However, it would be better from an SEO perspective to use descriptive image names. The same is true of product images (if displayed in the public area). Whereas our Image Processor automatically recognizes images named with the SKU, descriptive names would be preferable, though that requires they be accurately entered in the spreadsheet or Admin Console Item Manager.

   “Alt” tags within image tags are also important and should include words descriptive of the image and should include some of your Keywords if at all possible. A good image tags complete with an “alt” description looks like this in HTML code.

   <img src=”http://yourdomain.com/images/descriptive-image-name.jpg” alt=”My image description with keywords” />

    

7. Links to Your Site: This last bonus item doesn’t have anything to do with the way your site is built, but it can improve your ranking, if several sites are linking to your site. This is why OmegaNet maintains specialized portals (GiftsWholesale.Com, AccessoriesWholesale.Com, ApparelWholesale.Biz, DecorWholesale.Com, ToysWholesale.Com, and USMadeWholesale.Com) which allow you, for a small monthly fee, to be listed and link to.