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Text and META-data
Text and META-data
If you want good rankings in search engines, you need good content. Content is King! The more good content you have the higher your chance of being found. It's like a lottery. For each piece of valuable content you have, you have a ticket in the "search lottery". The more tickets you have, the higher your chance of having someone click on your link.
On a web page, some text can be seen as part of the visual presentation and some text is "hidden", including META-tags, title-tags, comment-tags (something programmers use to help them navigate the code) and ALT-tags (text descriptions of pictures).
Search engines have reduced the amount of importance they place on META-tags, with the exception of the title-tag. More weight is placed on the visual text - the text that users will see when they arrive at the web page.
The title-tag is technically not a META-tag. It is the most important HTML tag on your site. The title-tag displays the site's name, which will appear in the top of the browser. All major spider-driven search engines consider the keywords found in this tag in their relevancy calculations. You should pay special attention to this tag, as it carries a lot more weight than most other objects of a web page. You can read more about how to write good title-tags in the next section.
Introduction to keyword research
Before optimizing your website, you need to know what keywords your target group is using. Your keywords are the words and phrases that people might use to find your products, brands, services, or information, via search engines.
You can probably develop a few ideas very quickly. If you run a travel portal, keywords such as: "travel", "vacation", and "holiday" might be good ideas. In fact, a deep research into the topic of "travel" would probably show more than 100,000 different keywords people use when they search for travel information.
Does that mean you have to target all those keywords? No, absolutely not. You should use such research only as a good starting point. Use it to learn the search behavior of your audience. Find out what they call things, how they identify subjects, how precisely or broadly they generally search.
You may discover that the majority of searches for "travel" come from people using combinations of "travel" and a certain city, country, or region. Or you may verify that people search for "travel" more than "vacation".
All this research should be used in the way you tailor your web pages and the way you write your text, titles and META-tags. If most people in your target group use the term "travel" to describe your product, so should you.
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Your most important keywords will often include some of the following:
· Your company name, including synonyms and abbreviations
· All product and brand names that you feature on your website
· Countries, regions, or cities you have an association with - often in combination with the one of the words above
· Relevant generic terms for your business, brands, or services (e.g. car, house or boat)
· Combinations of 2 and 3 keywords - many people search for phrases rather than single words
We recommend using WordTracker.com to research keywords, or go to the keyword tools category in the Lycos Open Directory to get a list of most of the available keyword tools and services.
Adding keywords to your website
Now that you know the keywords you want to target, it is time to implement the keywords on your web pages. The big question for many people is: How do I do that?
Basically you implement your keywords by using them on your web pages. It's that simple! The first and most important thing to do is use the words or phrases throughout the text on your web pages.
Some people confuse adding keywords to a web page with the META-keyword tag. As you will learn in the next section, the META-keyword tag does not count much in how well a web page ranks, so adding your keywords here and nowhere else won't help you at all.
Each section of your web page carries a different weight in the overall ranking process. In the next section you will learn the parts of your web pages that require special attention.
Focus on a few keywords for each web page In most cases a web page will only rank well for a few keywords - the one that search engines determine to be the most important for that page. If you run a travel portal you cannot expect to rank well for the thousands of travel related keywords people are using if you only optimize your front page. Instead, you have to optimize each of the web pages on your website that have content people are looking for - the keywords you have developed through your research.
Important places to use your keywords
Search engines weight keywords according to their placement on a web page. There are some spots that are more important than others - places where you should always remember to use the most important keywords for each web page.
·Page titles
The title of your page is the single most important place to have your keywords.
·Headlines
Headlines carry more weight than the rest of the text on your pages. This is because text found in headings usually identifies a particular theme or section of content. The headlines have to be formatted using the HTML-tags < H > to < /H > be identified by search engines.
·Body copy
Most people forget this is the most obvious place a search engine looks for relevant content. You have to use the keywords in the main viewable text on your web page. This is what the users will actually see, whether human or machine. If the keywords are not on the viewable page, then they should probably not be in any other area of the web page.
·Links
The words that are hyper linked on your web pages are sometimes weighed more heavily than the rest of the words in the main body text. So if you want to rank well for "pet shop Boston" you should use that phrase as a hyperlink somewhere on your page.
·META-tags
META tags should contain the keywords that appear on the page. As a general rule, if it is on the page, include it in the META-tags. However, the page will not rank well on their use alone. You can read more about META-tags in the next section.
·ALT-texts
The ALT-tag is also called "alternative text" and is used to describe images. You can see the text when you move your mouse over an image on a web page (that is, if they have added the ALT-tag). Some search engines read and index the text in ALT-tags but the weighting given varies from engine to engine.
Once again, always remember to only use keywords that are relevant to each of your web pages.
Introduction to page titles
The page title is the single most important piece of information on your page when it comes to achieving good rankings in search engines. The words you use in your title carry much more weight than anything else on your page. So use this limited space wisely.
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You should limit your page titles to 50-60 characters as most search engines do not read or list more than this.
How to write good page titles
First, make sure that all your web pages have unique titles. Go through each of your web pages and write a title that makes use of the most important keywords. The page title appears at the very top of your browser; it may or may not be the title on the front of your page.
Keep in mind that the page title is what the users will see as the hyper linked title in search results, so the phrase should trigger users to click on the link and visit your site!
The goal is to make titles that make people click and make use of your primary keywords for each page. If you want a page to rank well on "dental services Chicago" make sure to use those exact words in the title. Maybe a title like "Dental Services in Chicago - open 24 hours a day" would work well for you.
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To find the right balance between the use of your keywords and writing a catchy title that makes users click, we suggest you write a few titles for each page. Don't think too much about each of them - just write them down on a piece of paper. When you compare them side by side, it will often be easier to pick the best title.
Introduction to META-tags
META-tags are pieces of text placed in the header of your web pages. Text in a META-tag is used to describe the page. META-tags are often referred to as META-data, which means "data about data", or in this case, data about your page.
META-tags can help search engines better understand and present links to your website. Thus, it is highly recommended that you fill out the META-tags on ALL of your web pages.
META-tags that are important to use
There are many kinds of META-tags and standards, but the only two you need when optimizing a website are META-description tag and the META-keywords tag.
Adding META-tags to your web pages
How to add META-tags to your web pages depends on how you maintain your website. You should refer to the manual of the editor or content management system you are using for further detailed instructions.
In most cases there will be a simple box somewhere with two fields to fill out: The META-description and the META-keywords, or just "description" and "keywords". Your program will usually take care of inserting the necessary HTML code in the right place for you.
If you are coding your web pages by hand or in a simple HTML editor, make sure you do not make any syntax errors. If the META-tags have not been coded correctly search engines will not be able to read and use them.
Writing good META-descriptions
The META-description is used by some search engines to present a summary of the web page along with the title and link to the page.
Not all search engines use the META-description. Some search engines use text from the regular text on your web pages and some use a combination. All you can do is make sure you have valid META-descriptions on ALL your web pages so that the search engines that use them have something to read.
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You should limit your META-descriptions to 150-200 characters as most search engines do not read or list more than this.
At Search Engine Watch you can see a list of which major search engines use META-descriptions and those that do not.
Writing good META-keywords
META-keywords are very often misused and misunderstood. Some webmasters put hundreds of keywords in this tag in the completely unrealistic hope of receiving good rankings for everything listed. Some webmasters even include keywords that have absolutely nothing to do with the actual web page or website.
That has forced the search engines to lower the META-keywords importance in the determination of what a web page is about. However, some search engines still read and use the META-keywords. Thus, remember to write relevant META-keywords for all your web pages.
You should write a unique set of keywords for each web page. You should NEVER copy the same set of keywords for all your web pages.
Do not add keywords that are not 100% directly related to each web page. To be safe, only use keywords that are found in the visual text on your web pages.
It is often discussed whether or not to use commas between keywords. Most search engines will not care as they remove the commas before reading the keywords, but some search engines might still use the comma to find exact keyword and keyword phrase matches.
In any case, the META-keyword tag does not carry much weight in the overall ranking algorithm for any of the major search engines and you will never get penalized for either using or not using commas.
Some people use commas because it makes it easier to read in the raw code. This can be helpful if you want to edit the META-tags by hand at a later time.
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The limit for the META-keyword tag is 1000 characters but you should never add that many keywords. Insert the 3 to 5 most important keywords for each given web page in the META-keywords tag - no more! The more keywords you use, the less weight they each carry.
Will META-tags give me top rankings?
No, META-tags are not magic bullets. You will not achieve top rankings on keywords if you only use them in your META-tags.
However, we still recommend you fill out your META-tags as some search engines do read and use the data. In those search engines it will give you a better chance of receiving relevant visitors if you have correct, optimized, and relevant META-tags on all your pages. Remember, only those words that appear in the main body of the page should be in the META-tags.
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