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Meta Tags / Search Engines
Think meta tags are the magic solution to ranking well? Create the perfect combination
with the perfect keyword density? Not hardly. We can tell you what is important and what is
not with meta tags. Meta tags are part of HTML that's used to describe web page content for
search engines. Meta tags are within the head area of HTML web pages which describe, categorized,
and indexed by search engines, not viewable by visitors.
However, these days the crawler based search engines are not even utilizing some or all of the metas.
Most will support one tag or the other but rarely does a search engine support them all.
Crawler based search engines include: Google, Teoma, Alta Vista, Inktomi, AllTheWeb and others.
Directory based search engines like Yahoo
Directory and DMOZ Open
Directory do not spider your pages. They rely on the meta tag scripting content.
The Title Tag
Just about all major search engines use the title tag in some way and many use it to compose
the headline in their listing. When creating the title for each page you want to include your
primary search terms or keywords and create a concise description of the page in general. The
title tag is also used as the text to describe your page when someone adds it to his or her
favorites list and it displays in the title bar, so it's important to make it descriptive.
Keyword Content
Keywords should not exceed 200 characters. Don't use words that are not relevant to your content,
too broad or general, or ones that are too saturated with your competors listings. The keyword
tag allows you to list the keywords for the page however, as search engine spidering techniques
change, fewer and fewer search engines are still supporting it. Inktomi and Teoma are the few
search sites that even take keywords into consideration.
Always use your keywords in the title and aim for a keyword density of 20-35%. Example: Your keyword is
"Websites". Your title could be: "Buy Websites at Leer Website Company" and since we
used websites twice within 6 words the density is 33%. This may not always be possible if you are targeting
more than one keyword. The important thing is make certain your title is highly descriptive of your page
but try not to dilute the effectiveness of your keywords in meta tags.
Most of the major search engines like
AltaVista,
AllTheWeb and
Teoma make most use of the tag.
Google creates its own description
and ignores the meta description tag. Others may support it partially. The Yahoo Directory, are not search engines and they
rely on descriptions you supply when you submit.
Tips and Suggestions
Frame websites tend to be a brick wall for an effective search engine optimization
strategy. Don't use frames unless it is critical to your presentation. If you already have a
website designed with frames, implement the no-frames tag and a search engine friendly site map
so that Google and the other web crawlers can read and follow the links throughout your site.
If you are creating a new website now, don't use frames and save yourself all the trouble.
Most E-commerce sites as well as other sites, make use of content that is stored in a database
instead of an HTML page. The content is delivered on demand when a visitor clicks or makes a
request. This makes indexing the site particularly troublesome for some crawler-based search engines.
Google can crawl any page that a browser can read, but most of the other search engines have problems
with special characters. Use robot friendly characters.
I personally love flash sites. The presentational aspect is great to look at. There are drawbacks to
flash websites. No search engine crawler including Google, can read the text inside of flash files.
You can certainly still have flash within your website, just use it sparingly inside of your pages,
and make certain the important content relevant to your website is purely HTML.
Whenever possible, use text links in your web pages and not images to link to other
pages in your website. Googlebot and other web crawlers cannot read images. When the robots visits your site,
they navigate your HTML pages via text links. Make certain that all of your pages link to each other and use
the primary keyword for each page. Another good rule of thumb is to use a site map that is linked from the
home page, which robots can easily spider. |
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