Tips for Making Your Pages Search Engine
Friendly
As with many other
things which are unseen, there is a lot of unnecessary mystery
surrounding the use of meta-tags on web pages. The meta tags are
information packets in the head portion of a web page.
Though there are several possible meta tags that may be included
in the head of a web page, the ones which are most important for
search engine optimization are the Title Tag, the Description
tag and the Keywords tag.
The title tag is really one of the most important single things
you can work on for improving your website's search engine
results. Go to Google and make a search for any particular key
word If you look at the top ten entries in that search you will
see that all of them have this key word in the title, sometimes
more than once. So when writing your title tag, it is helpful to
have your keywords included in the title tag, and not only in
the tag, near the beginning of the title.
Suppose that your company is the Acme Manufacturing Company and
you are selling electric widgets and you are located in
California. What should your title tag be? Most people would opt
for the name of their company as the first word of the title. It
makes sense, in that it looks good in the blue strip at the top
of the browser, but it doesn't necessarily help you to get a
good ranking in search results for your keywords "electric
widgets, California".
The first few words of your title tag are very important. People
may not be searching for Acme Manufacturing, unless it is a very
important brand, but they are searching for electric widgets,
and they may not want to purchase it from someone in New York,
especially if it is not a mail-order type item.
In addition, if there are tons of widget companies, it will be
difficult to get to the top of the heap in a search simply for
the term "widgets". But if it is "widgets, California", then you
will have a good chance of getting a high ranking if you put the
keyword California prominently in the title. So, if you are in a
very competitive category and your customers don't already know
about you, then you might consider a title tag like this
"Electric widgets from Acme Manufacturing of California" or even
better "Electric Widgets in California produced by Acme
Manufacturing."
Some guidelines for the title tag suggest that this tag be
limited to 70-80 characters including spaces. I confess to have
used more on several occasions.
The next tag that has to be done is the Description tag. Many
search engines use the description tag as a way to tell the
searchers what the page is about. On MSN, for example, the
description of the site shown underneath the title is the
description that has been placed in the description tag.
The description tag is thus important in two respects: the
search engine robot searches it for keywords to "get an idea" of
what the page is about, and this tag will be seen by the surfers
as they scroll down through the search results. If it is an
interesting and well-written description then they may click
through to visit the site. So this tag should be well written
but also contain the important keywords that you wish to
highlight.
Going back to our example of Acme Manufacturing. We could make a
description tag that reads as follows: "Acme Manufacturing is
the largest producer of electric widgets in California,
providing round the clock service and warrantees on all
products." This description contains the keywords again and also
says something about the company.
Some guidelines for description length recommend a maximum
length of 250 characters. Once again there is no precision about
this, but it is good to be cautious until you are already
entered into a search engine's index.
The last of the important meta tags relevant to search engine
optimization is the keywords tag. In this tag you have a chance
to list your important keywords, but this time they do not have
to be in a coherent phrase as in the Title and Description. Put
your important keywords near the beginning. Make sure that all
the keywords used in the title and the description tags are
again listed. On top of that, add prominent keywords, especially
those that appear in the actual text of the page you are
optimizing. For the Acme Manufacturing company we could have
these keywords: "widgets, widget, electric widgets, California,
widgets in California, Acme Manufacturing, service, warrantee,
warrantees".
Many pundits advise against excessive repetition of any single
keyword even if they appear in different phrases separated by
commas. Once again the guidelines vary and are not precise but
it would be better to be conservative at first. How big should
the keywords section be? 800-1000 is the estimate provided by
some search engines and commentators alike. (Lately some of the
main search engines have begun to disregard the keywords tag in
their computations of rank, but some search engines continue to
use it, so you can still include it in your metatags.)
The thing to remember about meta tags is that they are just one
part of search engine optimization. If your text is keyword rich
and your page structure allows the search engines to get to this
text easily and if, on top of this, you have crafted your meta
tags well, then you have an excellent chance of getting the
search engine positioning results that you are aiming for. (More
free seo articles http://www.vistadivine.com/seo-articles/articles.html)
About the Author:
Akash Kumar is a search
engine optimization expert and also the founder of
vistadivine.com - an economical
search engine optimization
firm.
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