Getting Started With SEO (part 4)

A properly constructed HTML web page has two parts, the HEAD section and the BODY section. There are two tags you can use in the HEAD section that can help improve your search engine results.

1 - the <title> tag provides a title for your document. This does not show on your web page though most browsers display the title content in the top bar or top margin of the browser window itself. Include an actual title along with additional keywords, like this:

<title>Our Hutch Web Services - Listing Templates - Website Design - Search Engine Optimization - Small Business Consulting&lt/title>

The title tag plays a constantly changing, but significant, role in the indexing of your page. Using it well can be beneficial.

2 - the <meta> tag provides a way to include extra information about your web page. There are several different uses for the meta tag. Two of them that you should use include:

a) The meta "keywords" tag provides a place to insert keywords that reflect the nature or content of your page. There is quite a bit of discussion about the number of keywords to use but I have found somewhere between one dozen and two dozen works well. Any keywords used should also appear in the page content.

<meta name="keywords" content="website design, eBay listing templates, template filler forms, the wiz, online shopping, online business, small business consulting, search engine optimization, SEO, eBay sales, online selling, websites, web sites, affiliates, earn money, web design" />

b) The meta "description" tag provides a place to put a short paragraph that tells about the nature or content of the page.

<meta name="description" content="Our Hutch Community Web Services is your source for listing templates, website design and hosting, search engine optimization (SEO), and small business consulting. The wiz is known the world over for his excellent designs and great business advice." />

Note that meta tags have no closing tag and thus must be closed within the tag itself.

There is considerable discussion about the value of meta tags in today's search engines ranging from "they are very important" to "they serve no value at all". I believe the truth is somewhere in between. Used well, they certainly cannot hurt. When someone locates your page in most search engines the text description they most often see is the contents your meta description tag. When there is no meta description tag the search engine pulls the first few words, headings, etc. out of your page, or sometimes finds a bit of text that contains one or more of the keywords searched for, to construct the text it displays. Which would you rather people see, a well crafted description of your choice, or some bit of text select, or randomly chosen, by the search engine?

Time is exceedingly important. The longer your domain is in the search engines the better your results can be. I started a new site the week before Christmas. I registered the domain and, on the same day, I put up a holding page. A few weeks later I finally got around to putting up a more correct landing page for the site. By late the same afternoon the new page could be found on the first page of search returns. There were some limitations which a little more time will correct but, because I acted early, the domain was already indexed and updates took very little time to be found. As soon as you know you are going to be setting up a website get your domain and get something in place to start the process going. When starting from scratch a new domain can take several weeks to find its way to basic indexing and, perhaps, months to get good indexing. So get started now!