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Title Tags and Meta Tags
Web Page Title Tag
Your Web Page Title (that appears in the browser window) is the most important tag in Search Engine Optimisation. All search engines make use of the text in the title tag in their ranking algorithm and a good title is critical to your search engine rankings.
The Web page Title tag is the single most important mechanism you have available with which to describe what your pages are really about... not just to the end user performing the search query, but to the various search properties out there as well.
When it comes to Search Engine Optimisation and positioning, your page Title tag is given the most weight of any single "on page" element of optimisation, and remains one of the most important elements we have to work with for achieving good Search Engine Position (SEP)... if you do them right.
The optimum number of words for a page title is 6 to 12 words. This is a guideline and not a rule. Each search engine has different maximum values for the title area. 80 Characters is an absolute maximum ceiling to stay within, although ideally it's best to stay within 60 Characters. Most search engines will ignore anything over 80 characters in the title (except Altavista and Infoseek). If you are creating custom pages for each search engine, you can use up to 80 chars for Alta and Infoseek.
It is also highly recommended that you add meta description and meta keyword tags to the HTML code of your web pages. Some search engines will read them and will boost a web site which contains them.
When you start creating the title tag of your web pages, first revisit the final list of your keywords. You will then have some idea of the words that you are going to use. Use as many of your meta tag keywords in your page document as possible and kept them close to the top of the page. This can be a bit tricky to write, but after a couple of attempts, you\'ll get the hang of it.
Meta Description Tags:
are used to describe the page content for search engines. They are placed after the Title Tag and before the Meta Keyword Tag. They exist in the head section of a HTML page, between the <head> and </head>tags. If you have any javascripts on your page, it is advised to place the meta tags before them. The search engines give more importance to the text which appear higher on the pages.
The syntax of meta description tag is:
<meta name="description" content="descriptive text about the page">
This meta tag fulfills two objectives. The text placed within this tag is given some weight with most search engines, and can help a page to rank slightly higher in the search results.
Your objective should be to, combine all the keywords in order, to create an attractive key phrase. Remember that the title tag is the first impression that your visitors have of your web site, so the marketing attitude should be the dominating factor. See how many keywords you can combine without hurting the attractiveness of the words.
Sometimes, web masters spend a lot of time and effort editing the meta tags more than it is needed. Meta tags are important but are definitely not a dominant factor for your web site\'s high ranking. However, you can use their potential to the maximum if you re-establish the visible textual content of your web page.
Meta Keywords Tag:
Simply inserting a keyword in your meta tags does not imply that you will get high search engine positions for that keyword. The meta tags can just be used to add more support to the actual text of the web page.
To give your keywords even higher visibility, you should submit your own table of contents style sitemap. Your sitemap should be a general outline structure of your site including titles to all your subpages.
DON'T ever include a keyword or key phrase in your meta tags that is not present on that page. Keywords should REINFORCE what is on the page, not define it. I see this all the time, as search engines are defining this a spam more and more of the time. Infoseeks latest design for ESP: Extra Search Precision, will all but throw out any keyword found in a meta tag that is not present on the page.
The search engines will often use the first few lines of the visible text that appears on the web page as the description of the site that appears on the search results pages, if no meta description tag is used. But if description tag is used it takes the text of this tag and uses it as the description of the site that appears on search results page. It lets you control the description of your site in the search engine results.
You should definitely use the important keywords on the page and it should be written in such a way that it will tempt the surfers to click on the link to your web site. It should be thought of as, a marketing tool, apart from a Search Engine Optimisation tool.
Most search engines, index tags containing up to approximately 200 characters of the meta description tag. Do not repeat words in this tag. You may use various forms of words in this tag, like using plural or singular forms of words, or using a different tense etc. Try to write it as an actual sentence, instead of making it a series of keywords. Limit this tag to one good descriptive sentence. If you are using two sentences, make sure that they are short.
However, going over the limit does not mean that your tag will be discarded. However, the search engine will not use the extra text beyond the limits. Stick to the minimum to be on the safer side.
Picking the Target Keywords
In the early days of Search Engine Optimization, the meta keyword tag was a great tool for the search engines to use to help them determine how to rank sites in their search results. But soon people started to abuse this tag by stuffing it with keywords, sometimes even with irrelevant ones (if they were popular words on the Net). This brought untargeted visitors. Finally, it was neither good for the search engines, net surfers, nor the web sites.
Over time, search engines started to withdraw the importance they had given to this tag. The main content became the dominating on-the-page factor. But as there is no harm in placing the most important keywords in this tag, you may do it.
The syntax of meta keywords tag is:
<meta name=\"keywords\" content=\"keyword1,keyword2,keyword3\">
The first words of any tag are given more weight than later ones. So put the important keywords first. Try to use the same keywords first that you will use in the title tag.
The one-word keywords should be avoided as they are hyper-competitive. Instead of wasting your effort with the one-word keyword, it is suggested that you concentrate on those keywords which are easily manageable. It is wise to use the two or three word keywords. An example of a three-word keyword: "affordable web hosting".
Another important location where you should place your keywords are the text within the anchor tag and the alt tag of the images. Search engines read and lay emphasis on the text within the links, so use them to impress the search engine spiders. Try to use textual links wherever possible, since spiders cannot read images.
Place your keywords in the alt tag of your images. Do not just write a series of keyword, but make proper grammatical sentences.
Another thing that you have to consider is the number of competitors for those keywords. The best keywords are those with high popularity and fewer number of competitors. It takes a lot of time, skill and study to find those keywords. This step is one of the initial stages of search engine optimization. If you start it after the design is complete and content has been written. It will be too late.
Fortunately there are services available on the Internet from proprietary databases that let you access the search history of the net surfers. Each of these services are able to provide you with some definite numbers that interpret the effectiveness of the keyword. The balance between the popularity and number of web sites that compete for a particular keyword eventually decides the effectiveness of a keyword. Sometimes, it is a very subjective thing to decide upon the keywords.
Some of the most popular and free keyword research tools:
WordTracker Keyword Research and Popularity Tool
www.wordtracker.com
Compiled database of keywords that people search for. Tells how often people search for the term and how many competing sites use that same term on a search engine. Helps measure keyword effectiveness.
Google AdWords Keyword Suggestions
https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox
7Search Keyword Suggestion Tool
http://www.7search.com/scripts/advertiser/sample_get.asp
This tool generates keyword popularity by the number of times that a keyword was searched in the 7Search database the previous month. It also displays related terms and their popularity.
Optimising a web site for the search engines is a cumulative effort. You should use everything available to you that the spiders might give some importance, and so you should use the meta keyword tag.
Some believe that spiders assign more importance to the last few sentences of a web page, since they are probably looking for conclusion information. Include your important keywords at least once in the last three sentences.
It used to be that search engines worked solely on keyword density (count of keywords in the document) - this is still true to a degree, but not nearly as much. Formerly, you could have a page with "Bob's Television" and a search on "Bob's Television" would put you first in the rankings for a perfect match. Now days, document length is starting to get higher relevancy. The search engines have caught onto all of the short doorway pages and have begun giving higher credence to longer documents.
It is very time consuming and requires a lot of effort and skill to develop the content of your site. If you do not have that much time to spend, hire a professional to do it for you. Great content is a must.
Make sure that there are no grammatical mistakes in your web pages. Proof-read the entire content of your web site for spelling mistakes or typos before you start promoting it. Misspelling or other textual mistakes create a bad impression on the visitors.
Optimising Page Content
Relevant and optimised content is the foundation of success in search engines, and is the most important factor that you should focus on. Relevant content strengthens the keywords used in the title and meta tags. Optimised content is the placement of keywords within the main content to ensure the best keyword density.
Position your target keywords to appear in the important locations. The heading tags are important. Include the keywords in the heading tag. Try to write them in such a way that the keywords are placed closer to the beginning of the tag.
It is believed that the first words of an HTML tag are of more importance to the search engine than the words that come later. Some spiders may not index the whole page, so it\'s useful to have the code of your important body content as close to the top of the page as possible.
The first two paragraphs are extremely important when search engine spiders look at the content of your web page. It is believed that the search engines prefer pages where keywords appear near the top of the page. Include them in the first two paragraphs of your web page. However the entire content is important.
The bottom line is to ensure a proper keyword density while keeping the copy as attractive as possible to the human visitors.
However, placement of the body content near the top becomes a factor if you have a lot of javascript in the head section, or if you are using a table structure. The codes of the table or javascript pushes the real textual content downwards.
If you want to optimise javascript, put all the javascript code in an external .js file and call that file from within your html file. This also reduces the size of your page if your javascript large. Some javascripts which are not required to be in the <head> section, can be placed at the end of you page in an external .js file which can be called from within the html file. The same can be done with cascading style sheets (CSS) too. Below is a snippet of code which shows how this is done.
<link href="filename.css rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/> and
<script language="javascript" type="javascript" filename.js"></script>
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