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Meta Tags and Keywords
So with a little practise now you should be starting to get the hang of laying out simple or even more complex webpages. theres a few more Tags I want to Talk about and then its time to start finding a place to put your websites out on the Web so you can see if they work for real. META Tags are often overlooked by newbie web designers but are very important to Search Engines. Not all search engines however use META Tags so all the information on your website actually comes into play when Search Engines catalog your website. Everything from what you name your documents, to your ALT Image Tags to the Text that is included on your website all comes into play. The META Tags however are used by many major Search Engines to help them organize when your pages should be displayed when someone searches for a specific KEYWORD. If you have ever gone to a search engine like www.yahoo.com and searched for a specific topic... you have used keywords. You type a word or words in their search box ..hit enter(or go) and magically a list of 45,788 webpages appears. What just happened is Yahoo has all of these pages indexed by Keywords so that if someone types in Portland they may find sites relating to Portland, Maine or Portland, Oregon. If someone types in Portland Maine in the keyword search - you might still get Oregon sites but Portland Maine websites should appear near the top of the list. Go ahead.. go to www.yahoo.com and search for Portland Maine. You'll see a lot of subcategories that get you further down into the list of websites regarding Portland Maine. You may notice somewhere in the Top Ten or Twenty listings a website called Portland Maine Info Link. If it doesn't come up immediately look in the Travel and Transportation Local Guides Subcategory. This was one of the first websites I set up and my whole purpose was to create a website that Tourists could find easily when they searched the web for Portland Maine. So what I did is I went into many of the major search engines and I searched for "Portland Maine" Each search engine gave me groups of categories or websites pertaining to Portland Maine. I then explored all of the categories and made notes regarding how each search engine subdivided their categories and what they specifically call these categories. You will notice search engines divide their file hierarchy structure into categories like, Arts and Entertainment, Business, Travel etc and as you go further into these categories they further subdivide until you end up with a list of categories pointing to specific websites. The key is to Put all the Keywords they use to define their categories as well as Keywords that describe your website and use these to define the Keywords that people can use to get to a location where hopefully you will be added. Its lots of trial and error and I'm not sure if ther's a bettre way to do it but researching where you hope to be located seems to work for me. So Joe Golfball manufacturer might research various topics like, Sports, Golf, Golfballs, Golfcourses and come up with a List of Keywords that will hopefully lead visitors to his website. Then you place a META Tag called Keywords inside the HEAD section of your document which never gets displayed to the public but that Search Engines can read. This META Tag is <META Name="Keywords" Contents=" and this is where you put the list of words, seperated by, commas, and dont forget your end quotation"> If you go to my website at Portland Maine Info Link and View my Page Source you can see the Keywords I researched to add to my website. The other really important META Tag is <META Name="Description" Contents="A short little site description goes here"> The description contents should be a short 25 words or less description of your website which Search engines sometimes use to display next to your website when it comes up in the big list when people search for websites. Some Search Engines actually review your site and write their own descriptions... others use what you give them. The other thing to know about META Tags and Keywords is not to abuse them. By putting a Keyword like Golfball in your metatags 100 times isn't going to get you a higher placement than someone who lists it once. In fact it may have the opposite effect and get you bumped from that search engines list. Also don't abuse it by putting every word in the dictionary in your keywords. Use only relevant keywords that reflect the content of your website and if your specific pages deal with specific topics.. put those keywords near the start of your keyword list on those pages. Also META Tags should be included on EVERY page in your website Not all Search engines use Keywords to index sites so keep in mind the first 500 words on your webpage are the most important in getting pages indexed. So If you manufacture Golf balls and your first paragraph said" Joes Golf Balls - Golf Ball Manufacturer from Portland, Maine . Golf balls for professionals and amateur golfers" - it reinforces the words Golf Balls and Golf even if it seems redundant. Another way is to relist your keywords in a hidden tag <!-- list of keywords goes here, golf, golfballs, etc --> It hides the keywords from view while the search engines still see them and index them. |