here are three meta tags that are huge for search engines. All meta tags go between the <head> and </head> tag pair.
The most important of all is the <title> tag pair. Some webmasters don't bother with a title for their pages - that is totally nuts. Most search engines weigh the title very heavily. I've also seen some titles that consisted of only keywords (not terribly readable for humans though). Additionally, when users save a bookmark to your page, it is the title they see in the bookmark list, so human readable is just as important as search engine readable. In some browsers, if you don't have a title, the bookmark does not show up in the user's bookmark list - not even as a blank line, it just does not show up. Seems a waste to work so hard to have someone find your site, then not let them come back because your bookmark is invisible.
A typical home page title might look something like this (human friendly):
Code:
<title>Widgets R Us: Makers of networking equipment for professional hosting providers</title>
An alternate home page title might be (keyword based):
Code:
<title>Widgets R Us: router, load balancing, KVM switch, RS232, RS-232, switch, concentrator, CSU/DSU</title>
Usually you want each page to have a unique title, but don’t forget to put your site name or company name in each one. Unique titles will help both your visitors and the search engines. You probably want to limit the title to 100 characters or so.
Secondarily (for most search engines) is the <meta name="description" ...> tag. Where do the search engines get the page description they show on the search results page? Typically, they pick it up from the top of your web page -- which may not be enticing enough to get someone to click your link on the search results page. However, the description tag lets you say exactly what you want to say on the search results page -- the search engines will display your description instead of trying to generate one from the content of your page. Plus many search engines will weigh this information almost as heavily as the page title. Rather than keyword based, this should be human friendly.
A typical description tag might look something like this:
Code:
<meta name="description" content="Widgets R Us supplies networking equipment for professional hosting services. Multi-port load balancing routers, KVM switches, RS-232 switches, and CSU/DSUs">
You should probably keep the description down to 200 characters or less, or the tail end will get chopped off when displayed by some search engines.
Finally, ignored by some search engines, but critical to others is the <meta name="robots" ...> tag. There is one engine (name escapes me at the moment, but an important one), which will come to your entry page, and if it does not see that tag, it will stop -- it will not index your site and it will not follow your links. As more search engine spiders start playing nice, this tag could grow in importance.
If you want your site indexed by that engine, use the following:
Code:
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow">
The variables are index/noindex and follow/nofollow. Of course you cannot count on noindex or nofollow being honored.
What about the <meta name="keywords" ...> tag? With all the past abuse that's gone on with this tag, not many search engines even look at this any more. And if you do it wrong you can actually hurt yourself. It is pretty safe to ignore this tag. However, if you really want to use it you may.
Here is an example of what not to do:
Code:
<meta name="keywords" content="router, routers, load balancing, firewall, KVM switches, KVM switch, switch, RS232 switch, RS-232 switch, switching, CSU/DSU, CSU, DSU, multichannel, multi-channel, concentrator, concentrators">
The problem here is the repetition of the word "switch", buried in longer keywords. Typically, if you have a repeated word that appears more than three times, your score will drop. The more repetitions the lower your score --enough reputations and your site will be blacklisted by that engine.
And now for the stuff between the <body> and </body> tag pair.
What Arne said about sticking to the basics and avoiding gimmicks was spot on. Use the header tags, use the paragraph tags, use html for structure as much as possible -- then use CSS to make it look pretty. Avoid html bloat (no font tags, no spacer gifs, minimal use of tables for layout, etc.). If it makes sense in the Lynx browser, it will make sense to a search engine spider.
I would add something about hyperlinks. To a search engine, the text inside the <a> tag pair is critical. For example, this is all too common on many web sites:
Code:
For information about fail-safe redundancy in our load balancing routers, click here.
Stupid... "click here" are your keywords? If you structure your hyperlinks that way, they will be. Also, Imagine what your visitor sees when reading down a page of text with embedded links: "click here", "click here", "click here"....
It is much better to rewrite your sentences and put relevant text between the <a> tag pairs. Like so:
Code:
Here is some information about fail-safe redundancy in our load balancing routers.
Not only does "fail-safe redundancy in our load balancing routers" jump out at your site visitors (because hyperlinks look different than normal text), but that keyword heavy phrase jumps out at the search engine too -- and it lends the weight of those keywords to the page they link to.
Finally is a trick for people who have too many domain names. I don't know how valuable this is, but it is free and it cannot hurt.
If you have a few "spare" domain names, say for web sites you hope to develop one day, or to hold and sell for profit, you can use them to link to your active sites. Many domain registrars will let you have a domain parking page for free, if there is any way to customize that page, do it. Add a paragraph or two at the bottom of the page with relevant sentences (see above) and hyperlinks going to your active web sites. Some search engines specifically look for new domain registrations and will come to visit without your doing anything. If they find links to the sites you want to promote, these links will boost the score of your active sites. It’s simple, free, and positive.
Of course if you have more than one web site, cross-link them using the same technique. Perhaps if you had a "Links" page you could do your cross linking there.
How to optimize the site?
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