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Web Page Optimization for Top Search Engine Ranking
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1: Title and Meta Tags
Chapter 2: Title Tag
Chapter 3: Description Meta Tag
Chapter 4: Keywords Meta Tag
Chapter 5: Meta Tag Format
Chapter 6: Page Text
Chapter 7: Testing Your Page
Chapter 8: Submission
Conclusion
INTRODUCTION
You are building a Website or already have one online. You probably have goals for the site that involve getting traffic from interested people. You will not achieve these goals if nobody visits your site.
Search engines are one of the best places to get interested visitors to your site. Getting the highest position possible on the main search engines is an important step towards maximizing your site traffic and achieving your Website goals.
This e-book is designed to give you clear instructions on how to build your Web pages so that they get listed in the primary search engines and achieve a high position. First I explain what the title and meta tags are and how they help you. Then I cover how to develop an effective title, description, keywords, and page text. Once your page is optimized the next step is to submit your site to search engines on a regular basis.
Let’s get started optimizing your pages, getting you more traffic, and achieving your Web site goals.
Chapter 1
Title and Meta Tags
Title and Meta tags are HTML or XHTML tags placed in the <head> section of your Web site that are invisible to your visitors yet very important for search engine listing. The title tag is critically important. Meta tags may cover a range of information but the most important are the description and keywords.
When a search engine indexes your site it is looking at the title and description and may use both of these in the listing. Search engines give different weights to different parts of the Web page.
The Priorities search engines give when indexing sites are (in descending order):
1. Title tag
2. Page text in <body> of site (text on your actual Web page)
- If possible make the first sentence or two similar to the description for
your site.
- Include all important keywords in the page text with an emphasis on the most important keywords.
3. Description meta tag
4. Keywords meta tag
* It is important to include most relevant keywords in all four of these areas.
Chapter 2
Title Tag
For several reasons the title tag is the most important. When indexing your site search engines give title content the highest priority. The first thing they look for when evaluating your site is keywords in your title tag. Therefore it is very important to include your most important (relevant) keywords in the title. All other things being equal, a title with more relevant keywords to the search will rank higher than one with less relevant keywords.
Each page can have it’s own title that directly relates to the text content of the page. Some pages that are more general may use the same title you use on the homepage.
Search engines use the page title in their results to give potential visitors information about what is on your site. It is what people see when they read search results and what may or may not motivate them to click on your link. The title is also the text that shows up in the top of the Web browser when someone visits your site.
Title Tag Format:
The title should be a maximum of 60 characters.
Use Capitals for the First Character of Every Word.
Avoid period to reduce the number of characters
Place your most important keywords first. Keywords should be before your business name if you decide to include it. Generally it is not important to include your business name as people probably will not be searching for this.
Here is an example of a homepage title: Hosting, Internet Marketing, and Web Design – Pratt Systems
Here is an example of a sub page title: San Diego Web Hosting
Chapter 3
Description Meta Tag
The page description is the second most important meta tag. While it is not very important for determining search engine ranking it is important because search engines often use it as a summary line below the title to give searchers more information about your site. It tells people how relevant your site is to what they are searching for. Use it to motivate people to click on your link.
If the engine doesn’t index your description it may index the first line or so of your page text. Some sites, like Alta Vista, include the description in the listing. Some, like Google, may use the description, the page text, or both. Some, like MSN use a relevant line of page text as your listing description. So it is a good idea to make the description and the first line of page text the same. That way you are more likely to get the listing you want in all search engines.
While search engines don’t give much importance to your description when determining ranking it is still a good idea to include high priority keywords in both your description and first line of page text.
Each page can have it’s own description that directly relates to the text content of the page. Some pages that are more general may use the same description you use on the homepage.
Description Meta Tag Format:
The description should be a maximum of 150 characters.
Here is an example of a page description: Leading provider of Web hosting, Internet marketing, and Web design.
Chapter 4
Keywords Meta Tag
Keywords are the third important meta tag. They used to be much more important for search engine placement. Today (2005) most search engine crawlers ignore this tag. In spite of this meta keywords may reinforce the relevant keywords (in your title, description, and page text) and give you slightly higher ranking for the crawlers that support it. Meta keywords are most useful in conjunction with the keywords in the page text. They can be used when certain keywords are not in the page text. This may be useful for alternate word formats that may be used as search terms. Be sure that all keywords are relevant to the theme of the Web page.
Note: Throughout this chapter the term keywords = both keywords and keyphrases. Very often people search for phrases that contain keywords. You want to work with both when optimizing your pages.
The process of generating a list of highly relevant keywords is very useful because you can use those keywords in your title tag, description tag, and page text where they will make a huge difference.
Relevance refers to how closely the search results match what people are looking for. The higher the relevance of keywords in your title and page text to the search term used for the search, the higher your site will rank on search engines for relevant search terms. For example, let’s say you do a Google search for the keyphrase San Diego Tennis. Sites with the keyphrase San Diego Tennis in the title and page text will be more relevant and rank higher in the search results than a site with the keyphrase San Diego Racket Sports in the title and page text. If your target audience is San Diego tennis players then the keyphrase San Diego tennis is a better choice because it is more relevant. Unless you do a specific search with quotations (i.e. “San Diego Tennis”) Google will look for both the keyphrase and keywords within the keyphrase.
Keyword Meta Tag Format:
The keywords should be a maximum of 874 characters.
List keywords in order of importance from highest priority to lowest priority. Separate keywords with a comma and space.
Creating Your List of Keywords
The best place to start is by evaluating the keywords of your competitor’s sites. Go to a few of the strongest competitors and go to View/Source on your browser to bring up the source code for the page. Then copy and paste the keywords into a Word document. Brainstorm your own list of relevant keywords you believe people would type into search engines when looking for what you have to offer.
After you have compiled a pretty good list the next step is to get some data behind the keywords so you can see how many searches were done for each and prioritize your keywords. To do this go to: http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/rc/srch/?mkt=us and click on the link for the Keyword Selector Tool. Then enter a keyword and press enter. This will give you accurate statistics on the number of searches done for that keyword or keyphrase in the last month as well as related keywords. It will rank them in priority order according to the number of searches. I like to copy and paste the results into Notepad or Word, then delete any non-relevant keywords. After doing this several times I define a master list of keywords and prioritize them by the number of searches. The most searched on terms that are relevant to what you have to offer are your most important keywords and should be included in the title, description, and page text.
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