Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of every web designer's key steps in creating, maintaining, and promoting a valuable high-traffic website. Freeing you from the necessity of spending thousands of your dollars on promotion advertising, search engine optimization enables you to grow your traffic organically as your page rankings rise. What many web designers only learn after years of experience, however, is the powerful difference meta tags can make in how your pages rank.
No aspect of SEO is more commonly overlooked than placing meta tags on every page. These tags, written into the code of your page where they are invisible to visitors, give search engines specific identifiers for the page. Some websites create their listings almost entirely on meta tags, yet many website owners fail to implement them to full effect.
There are two kinds meta tags that have an especially high impact on SEO and how your pages rank. The first is the META KEYWORDS tag. This meta tag lists keywords for spiders, telling them what your website is all about. For example, if you visit www.nytimes.com and right click on the page, and then click on "View Source," you will find a meta tag about half way down the first page reading META KEYWORDS. This meta tag will display a list of keywords starting with "New York Times, international news, daily newspaper, people, regional news, national news?" and so on. This list includes dozens of keywords that relate to the New York Times but also to newspapers in general.
Most search engines also detect these keywords in page content, but it is helpful to include in a tag keywords that are especially low-density in text, such as unusual spellings of names and places, related topics not specifically mentioned on the page, and any other keywords it is difficult to inject into the text in a user-friendly way.
Another important tag is the META DESCRIPTION tag. This tag is used by the engines to present information about your website when it appears in search results. Most engines allow 160 characters here, and this is a place you can include keywords to boost your page rankings for targeted phrases.
There are many other meta tags, but these two tags are the most vital to SEO. Optimize your use of META KEYWORDS and META DESCRIPTION tags by making sure you do not cram them overfull of words that not related to your content. Always be aware that too many keywords here, like too many keywords in your content, will cause the search engines to mark your pages as spam.
Finally, be sure you use different meta tags for every page. It is useful to target tags to the content included on a particular page. If you repeat meta tags throughout your site, you will not benefit from valuable differences in keywords on particular pages. - 15433
No aspect of SEO is more commonly overlooked than placing meta tags on every page. These tags, written into the code of your page where they are invisible to visitors, give search engines specific identifiers for the page. Some websites create their listings almost entirely on meta tags, yet many website owners fail to implement them to full effect.
There are two kinds meta tags that have an especially high impact on SEO and how your pages rank. The first is the META KEYWORDS tag. This meta tag lists keywords for spiders, telling them what your website is all about. For example, if you visit www.nytimes.com and right click on the page, and then click on "View Source," you will find a meta tag about half way down the first page reading META KEYWORDS. This meta tag will display a list of keywords starting with "New York Times, international news, daily newspaper, people, regional news, national news?" and so on. This list includes dozens of keywords that relate to the New York Times but also to newspapers in general.
Most search engines also detect these keywords in page content, but it is helpful to include in a tag keywords that are especially low-density in text, such as unusual spellings of names and places, related topics not specifically mentioned on the page, and any other keywords it is difficult to inject into the text in a user-friendly way.
Another important tag is the META DESCRIPTION tag. This tag is used by the engines to present information about your website when it appears in search results. Most engines allow 160 characters here, and this is a place you can include keywords to boost your page rankings for targeted phrases.
There are many other meta tags, but these two tags are the most vital to SEO. Optimize your use of META KEYWORDS and META DESCRIPTION tags by making sure you do not cram them overfull of words that not related to your content. Always be aware that too many keywords here, like too many keywords in your content, will cause the search engines to mark your pages as spam.
Finally, be sure you use different meta tags for every page. It is useful to target tags to the content included on a particular page. If you repeat meta tags throughout your site, you will not benefit from valuable differences in keywords on particular pages. - 15433
About the Author:
Justin Harrison is a leading Internet Marketing consultant responsible for the Internet Marketing strategies behind some of the biggest online brands including Amazon, BBC, MasterCard and many others.
