Guidelines in preparing your web pages with meta tags to enable effective search engine submission and ranking
A meta tag is a special HTML tag that provides information about a Web page such as who created the page, how often it is updated, what the page is about, and which keywords represent the page's content. Many search engines use this information provided by meta tags while building their indices.
Hence creation of meta tags is one of the most important steps in Search Engine submission for a website. The most important meta tags you need to focus on are the Title, Keywords and Description tags. Follow these guidelines to craft appropriate meta tags that enable effective search engine submission and ranking of your website.
Step 1: Prepare a list of Keywords and c
What are Keywords?
Keywords are words that your customers would enter into a search engine to find your site. For E.g. in order to search for a web developer you would type 'web developers’, 'web designers’, 'web development companies' or 'web site development' as possible keyword searches.
Guidelines for preparing your keywords
- Make a list of your target audiences - Compile a list of your target audience, which must include all possibilities. For e.g. small businessmen, fellow web developers, corporates, professionals. This will help you know what they are searching for in various search engines as each of these target audiences will have different needs and interests, which when analysed can be addressed in your web site.
- Make a list of keywords and key phrases that describe your site - Keeping your target audience in mind, make a list of keywords and key phrases that best describe your site. You can do this by putting yourself in the shoes of your target audience and thinking of the words they would type in a search engine to find your website.
- Come up with as many keywords and key phrases as you can.
- As in the example mentioned before, one would put 'web designers', 'web site development' , 'global web development', 'professional web developers', 'web promotion' ,'dynamic web site development' as possible key phrases in order to search for information on ‘web developer’.
- Use plurals in your keywords- e.g. instead of 'web developer', use 'web developers'
- Use important words in different forms - e.g. 'develop web sites', 'web site developers' , 'web-site development' , 'developing web sites'
- Don't repeat the same word more than 4 times. Using the same keyword more than 4 times may be considered spamming in some search engines and can cause you to be blacklisted. So instead of repeating the same keyword again and again, try using it in different forms. For e.g. ‘web site’ can be used as ‘web-site’, ‘web sites’ etc. 4. Keep your keywords meta tag length between 200 and 500 characters.
Step 2: Deciding on your Title and Description
What is a Title and Description?
- Title - This is what appears on the title bar when you open a web site. This is also the link you see in the search results page of any search engine.
- Description - This is the description of the site (1-2 lines) which appears along with the title in the search results page.
See the example below to get a better idea of a Title and Description
Title - Web site design and development, DHTML, Flash, Promotion
Description - Developing creative, innovative and cost-effective static and dynamic web sites. We believe in making your business succeed online by expanding your business to the Global Marketplace, find out what makes us so unique.
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