Page 130 - Duct Tape Marketing

A Web Presence That Works Day and Night

they don’t really tell the search engines about your site. Use descrip-
tive text and search phrases for links. Use “Great Used Car Deal”
as a link to your Bob’s Used Cars site or “Find a Construction
Attorney” for your link to your roster of construction-related
attorneys.

Use Heading Tags
HTML, the Web’s programming language, uses a series of H or

heading tags to help structure a page like an outline: H1 for the most
important headings, H2 for subheads, and so on. Each of your pages
will do well to contain a keyword-rich headline, much like an ad for
the page, and H1,/H1 markup in the code to let the search engines
know that this is a really important part of the page. Then do the
same with subsections with H2,/H2 tags. I know that most designers
understand these tags when it comes to styling a page, but few get the
important role they play in the search engine game.

Create Site Maps
A site map is a page that has links to every page on your site in

a structured manner. Visitors may not often find much use for this
page, but search engines may use this page to find and index all of
your site’s pages.

Each of the major search engines has developed ways to submit
and update your site map. If you work with a Web designer, make
sure you inquire about each of the tips in this chapter. Take this book
with you to meet with your Web design firm, and demand that they
either address each of the elements in this chapter or explain why they
don’t think it is important. The world of Web sites and search engines
is fluid and ever-changing. You must constantly pay attention to the
shifting landscape or at least make sure that you are comfortable that
your chosen Web designer is on top of the latest trends in Web design
and search strategies.

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