Boosting your search visibility

Ideally, you want your site to be one of the first ones listed when someone uses a Web search engine to locate sites related to your business. Most search engines prioritize a list of pages they find by the exactness of the match for the word being searched, the number of times the word appears on each Web page, and the position of those words on the page (closer to the top is better). With these facts in mind, here are a couple of strategies to make your Web site more visible to search engines.

Use multiple keywords: Think of every possible word that someone might use to describe your business, products, or services, and make sure all of those words appear on your home page. You don't have to include the words as visible text. If you include them as comments to the HTML code that makes up the page, hide them behind graphics, or format them in the same color text as your page's background so that they're invisible, the search engine will find them just as well.

Repeat the most important keywords: Repeat the most likely and descriptive words several times on your page. Rather than listing "business financing" once as part of your home page's visible text, for example, include the words half a dozen times as invisible text near the top of the page.