Search Words on a Web Page

Search Words on the home page

Your home page emphasizes the main words that describe what you offer

The homepage of your site is the most important page on your site for human visitors and for search engines. The homepage is a good place to explain what your website offers in general terms. Sometimes site owners forget about the general terms people could be searching for and go right for more specific words.

For example, a pet store might list types of pets on the home page without ever including the words “Pet Store in Smalleville, IL." Someone looking for a pet store in their town might never find their site, even though it’s an excellent match for “pet store." Remember you have pages within the site that will give more details and be more relevant for specific terms. Be sure your home page emphasizes the main words that describe what you offer.

Many sites have promotional or time-dated information on their homepages, rather than an overview of their service or purpose. This is fine, just be sure you have an introductory sentence or two with your search words that doesn’t change – ideally at the top of the page.

If you haven’t checked for search engine friendly navigation, it's a good idea to do that as well when you review your home page.

Mistakes to watch for on the homepage

1. No text on the home page - Sometimes the home page is one big graphic without any non-graphic text. Search engines can’t deduce what the topic of the site is if this is the case.
2. No wording on the home page that explains what the site offers - Sometimes the subject of the home page is so obvious to human viewers, there doesn’t seem to be a need to add a paragraph explaining what people can find on the site.
3. Branding emphasized instead of search words - Your name usually isn’t important to someone searching for a product or service. A home page with “John Smith DDS” doesn’t help people trying to find a “Dentist in Smalleville, IL."

Search words on topic pages (landing pages)

Interior pages are for more specific search words

Now look at the rest of your pages. You should see a relationship between search words that are topics, and pages on your site that relate to those topics.

In the pet store example above, the topic search words would be types of pets, and each term should have a page: puppies, kittens, fish & aquariums, hamsters, etc. These topic pages are called “landing pages." When someone searches for “kittens smallville il” we want the kitten page to show in search results. This is why it’s important for the home page to be the landing page for the general term for your business or service; the interior pages will be landing pages for specific topics.

What do you do if you have topic search words that don’t have corresponding pages? Write a new web page or delete these search words from your list. Don’t just throw words into a page that don’t fit the topic. Search engines are looking for quantity and quality. If you don’t have information for a subject you want to be found for then adding the words to a non-relevant page is not going to help.

Here are some common mistakes to watch out for:

1. Search words in images instead of text - Web designers often use graphics for the site’s top banner, navigation, and headings. The words in these graphics aren’t searchable by search engines. If you can right-click over the text and see the option to “save image as," then your text is in a graphic which search engines can’t understand.
2. Location only mentioned on homepage - If you are using geo targeting, your location must be paired with the services or products you are offering on the interior pages of the site. The search words should be on your web pages exactly as people will be typing them in search engines.
3.  “Click here” instead of links with search words - Search engines give special importance to the words in the link itself. This counts for words in the content area of the page as well as in the navigation and sitemap. Having a graphic link to another page, instead of a text link, also diminishes the links importance.
4. Acronyms used without the corresponding term spelled out - As with industry terms, non-experts don’t know the acronyms, and it’s likely an acronym in one field means something different in another field which means more competition in search engine results.
5. No headings, or no search words in the headings - Search engines look at headings on a web page to analyze the page's topic. Leaving them out, or leaving out the search words, makes your site less scannable for people and less hierarchical for search engines.
6. Words with multiple meanings used without qualifiers - For example “veneers” on a dentist site means something different than “veneers” on a furniture site. Use “dental veneers” or “furniture veneers."
7. Search words too low on the page - Be sure the search words are in the first paragraph.