Review Competing and Industry Leading Web Sites Check out your online competition. The term “competition†is referenced quite loosely in that industry leaders with whom you may not directly compete are also included here. Look at the sites for which you have a record and look for sites in the major search engines using some of the keyword phrases you have gathered so far. You want to see what sites are in the top 20 positions and understand them. By reviewing top ranking Web sites you can look for themes and patterns in the sites that give you a good indication of what they are going after and how they are doing it. You can then turn around and apply this new found knowledge to your own Web site. When reviewing competing Web sites you should look at the same general areas you would optimize on your own Web site. The most critical keyword placement areas include: Title tags (page titles) Keywords meta-tags Description meta-tags Alt tags Hypertext links (e.g., anchor text) Domain names and file names Body text (beginning, middle, and end of page copy; headers) Between the “NOFRAMES†tag of framed Web sites. By searching for your most important keywords and observing what the top-ranking sites are using with respect to their page content, title tags, description meta-tags, keyword meta-tags, and so on, you can formulate a good plan of attack. Remember that if you don’t appear in the first two or three pages of search results, it is unlikely that prospective visitors will access your site through the search engine. Check to see what meta-tags your competitors have. Not only can you learn from the sites that catch your eye, you can also learn from your competitors’ mistakes. After you have done a thorough job of this market research, you are in a good position to develop a description that is catchy and adequately describes your site. Check your competition’s meta-tags in FireFox you simply go to their site, then click “View†on your menu bar and select “Page Source†from the drop-down menu. This brings up the source code for that respective page in whatever your default text browser is. For most people this is Notepad. Looking for the same information in Netscape is just as easy. On the menu bar click “View†and then select “Page Source†from the drop-down menu. Pay special attention to the title tag of the top ranked Web sites. To get a little more specific you can narrow your search to keywords in a title tag.The reason for doing this is that optimizing a title tag is a given when it comes to search engine optimization, so it only makes sense to look at who else is doing it as well. On Google you can enter in “allintitle: keyword phrase,†without the quotes, to search for all pages with the noted keywords in their title tag. This approach is a little more focused than simply looking for all pages with a certain set of keywords because the keywords might just be there in passing, as a part of an article, and not something the site is intentionally trying to target. If the keywords are found in the title tag then there is a better chance its reason for being there is intentional. Not only can you learn from the sites that catch your eye, you can also learn from your competitors’ mistakes.