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I am at the point in my first professional design job that adding meta tags and descriptions is getting important. I understand the basics: keywords for all words people might use to search for my site and a description for the engine to display after my URL. I am also starting to understand Page Rankings, although I do not know how to get other sites to include links to my site. I am designing a site for a local Chinese food restaurant and I doubt many of the "important" sites will want to include links to us. What I need to find is more information about increasing the likelihood of someone finding us if they are looking for us. I do not have any real need to make myself come up on random searches like some sites will do by using keywords that have nothing to do with their content.
Does anyone have any wisdom to dispense of know of good resources that would explain more about this topic?
Thanks as usual-
People looking on the web may even be looking for specific items such as moo goo guy pan, in your city. Make sure you have a menu page which lists the items in bold type. Include the town and city on the menu page as well.
[added] In the title, use something like "Chinese food Restaurant - Chicago"
By all means, use meta tags. Although Google supposedly doesn't use them, they do under certain circumstances which means the bot "does" in fact read the info.
for a local Chinese food restaurant and I doubt many of the "important" sites will want to include links to us.
tbear:
many visitors from small local directories
HTH,
Jim
Next question... what does everyone think about using invisible text on the main page that incldes all of the things you have mentioned, like address, key words, menu items, etc? I don't see any problems other than taking up space, but as long as that space doesn't make the page look silly then is there a problem?
And also, in reference to JDMorgan... I have looked into Yahoo, and it is so expensive it is silly. I researched and found out that we are already included with the Yahoo Yellow Pages (they get their info from a company InfoUSA and we are listed with them) but I did not find one local restaurant in the actual Yahoo directory. That is why I am so interested in being found by the search engines. I know Yahoo will include in its results what the search engines find so it seems dollar for dollar being found is better than buying our way in.
Invisible text is as good a way as any of being permanently banned from all search engines.
Many people get away with it for a long time, it is very difficult to automate the detection of invisible text. Sooner or later many get caught.
Subtle ROTFL
With a business like a restaurant, there is no need for dangerous tricks like invisible text. In order to use the service (food), people have to go there. It is therefore a localized business, and easy to rank well. Even if a searcher types in "Chinese food" and gets 1,410,389 results, he/she is going to figure out they need to localize the request to "Chinese food downtown San Fran" or something like that. It makes ranking much easier to have a bricks and mortar place of business with an address that people have to go to to get service. Having a physical place of business helps a lot!
Warnings have been posted that invisible text and other tricks can be detected automatically. That may be partially true now and completely true in the future, but right now the biggest danger is that your competition will report you, and then a search engine employee will inspect your site and see all that silly stuff, and Tsai chien, ming tien jen, Poof! - You are gone!
Yeah, Yahoo! Directory is overpriced for small businesses - But get all the relevant listings you can get (and afford).
Jim
