Use Keywords and Meta Tags to get the Click!
Use Keywords and Meta Tags to get the
Click!
Now everyone knows that you need to choose keywords
and meta tags to make your site search-engine-friendly (don't they?).
And pages should be 'optimised' BEFORE you submit them to the search
engines.
Optimising your site for the search engines is
really not that difficult, but it is important: no-one visits your
site if they can't find it on the first few pages of a search engine.
A good way of 'getting found' is to choose high-demand
low-supply keywords (like "free nokia ringtones"), and
to create pages optimised for those keywords. (Obviously, you need
to find keywords relevant to your website.) The basic guidelines,
below, show you how to optimise your pages - how to make sure your
site gets the click - but how do you find these profitable high-demand
low-supply keywords in the first place?
=> USE THIS RESOURCE
Wordtracker is a free tool that allows you to
brainstorm keywords and determine which of those keywords (if any)
have little competition on the net (which are most 'profitable').
You simply add suitable keywords to a basket, and their profitability
is determined using AltaVista as the search engine (the paid-for
tool determines profitability using all of the major search engines).
Wordtracker is a powerful tool endorsed and used
by many so-called search engine experts. You should use it too,
to improve your chances of getting the click.
Wordtracker -
http://www.wordtracker.com
=> THEN STUDY THESE BASIC GUIDELINES
Many of the major search engines behave differently
to each other when it comes to choosing the best pages. Worse than
this, though, is that some use meta tags and some ignore them completely,
preferring only to rely on page content (with weighting given to
words at the top of the page). Even worse still, the search engines
constantly change their ranking rules (algorithms).
So understand that these are only basic guidelines.
However, they should help your web pages rank better with the search
engines, *over time*:
- TITLE tag should be between 5 and 12 words
- Meta DESCRIPTION tag should be between 5 and
20 words
- TITLE and Meta DESCRIPTION should be different.
Combine both to encourage someone looking at a busy page of search
results to click your link, rather than someone else's.
- Meta KEYWORDS tag should be between 0 and 50
words
- HEADING Tags should be used, if possible (and
these tags are used for ranking purposes instead of Meta DESCRIPTION
tag, sometimes)
- Meta KEYWORDS tag should contain words that
exist in TITLE and Meta DESCRIPTION tag (as well as in page content)
- Do not use too many COMMENT tags, or Image
ALT tags, especially if you stuff them with keywords
--- sidebar ---
Don't know what the above means? The HTML tags
are shown below:
* TITLE -
<title>Your page title here</title>
* DESCRIPTION - <meta name="description"
content="de scription" />
* KEYWORDS - <meta name="keywords"
content="key, words" />
* HEADING - H1, H2, H3,...
* COMMENT - <--! comments
go here or few keywords -->
--- end sidebar ---
Again, these are basic guidelines - don't take
them too literally. Remember, the most important content for the
search engines is also the most important content for your site
visitors - *your actual page content*.
=> READ MORE...
You can find out a great deal more about keywords,
meta tags etc. from the following excellent resources.
- http://spider-food.net
-
http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/meta.html
- http://www.searchengines.com
Remember
that search engines are getting more and more sophisticated. Concentrate
on creating valuable keyword-rich pages that your site visitors
will like; the search engines will like them too! And your site
is sure to get the click!
About the Author Steve
Nash edits Promote! Promote! Promote! a twice-monthly newsletter.
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