[thelist] Search Engine Article From InternetDay

[Daniel S. O'Shea]

Since I've been posting several questions lately, here's an article on
Search Engine tactics from http://www.internetday.com/ I thought some on the
List may find useful.

DanO

Internet Day

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Two New Search Engine Tactics

By Roger Wilcox


To carry on in the tradition of the classic e-book "Search Engine Tactics"
(as you surely know, written by Mark Joyner in 1995 -- the book that
pioneered e-book marketing and still a classic work on search engine
promotion), I would like to propose two new tactics in use today. With all
due respect to Mr. Joyner, a lot has changed since 1995.

Here are two brand new tactics that the search engine optimization gurus are
talking about:

1. New META Tag: "Aesop"

If you get nothing else from this article, get this. This new tag is popping
up on sites all over the Net and will dramatically change the way people
search. Essentially, this tag breaks all Internet content into six useful
categories. The purpose of this is to allow surfers to more accurately and
quickly determine if a search result is, indeed, what they are looking for.
It also allows Webmasters to attract more appropriate visits to their sites.
Right now, the only engine that recognizes it is aesop.com, but I have it on
authority that others are preparing to start recognizing the tag as well.

For more information, here is the official aesop META tag site (includes a
free tag generator). If you don't already have this tag on all of your
pages, it's critical that you do this right away:
http://www.aesop.com/metatag.htm

2. CSS H1 Spoof

In the early days of the Net, search engines were easy to fool. These days,
it's quite a bit more difficult, but it can be done. However, any time you
use some type of trick to spoof the engines, you always run the risk of the
engine catching you and banning your domain for spamming.

OK, with that caveat, here's the trick.

Some search engines will give words found in the "H1" tag a boost in
relevancy. The H1 tag is used to specify your page's heading. The problem
is, this heading is just plain ugly. It's a huge point Times New Roman
heading that doesn't look good in anyone's Web design book.

Here's the good news: you can get the best of both worlds using Cascading
Style Sheets (CSS). With CSS, you can specify that the browser will render
text in the H1 tag any way you please. This is great; because, you can get
both a boost in relevancy and get better control of your page's appearance
in one step.

Here's the code:

In your head tag, put the following line:


<STYLE> <!-- H1 {font-family: arial,helvetica; font-size: 12pt; color:
black; } --> </STYLE>
(Note that you can change any of the above variables - font size, type, and
color - as you see fit.)

Then, in the body of your document, where you want you document "heading" or
"headline", use the following code:


<H1>Text for Your Headline Here</H1>
The headline will now appear as you specified in the style code. This is a
great trick, and it's brand new.

Apply these new tactics today for some easy traffic courtesy of your
favorite search engines.

June 11, 2001