Title and meta tags
Good search engine optimization includes several factors that are explained in these SEO articles to help you achieve better search engine placement. Most of the tips given can be achieved almost immediately, while other factors explained will require a lot of time and effort. If you are serious about SEO, you are on the right track. Please note that the tips mentioned in these SEO articles are used by SearchBliss and some of the information stated is simply our opinion.
Before you start reading these articles, keep this in mind. The most important advice I can give you is to build your web pages with your visitors in mind. We’ve all been to sites that “don’t make much sense” as a result of webmasters selecting keywords that they have trouble placing in readable text. You may have thousands of website visitors every day, but it’s useless traffic when they leave your page in frustration and may never return.
Target the right keywords
Choose the right keywords. This is extremely important. Optimizing a site takes a lot of time, patience, and hard work. Doing this by targeting the wrong keywords can be devastating. Find relevant keywords that are frequently searched for. Be sure to target “phrases” rather than individual keywords. For example, targeting only “hosting” won’t help you. There are too many search results. But targeting “web hosting provider”, “web hosting service” and “hosting business” will get you more realistic results (and a ton of traffic). Also, it’s still targeting “accommodation”. I would suggest aiming for ONE “scope phrase” and TWO “realistic phrases”. Three sentences may sound like a lot, but not when one or two key terms are in all three sentences. When this happens, things don’t get watered down, giving better results.
Let’s start with the “basic bones” of SEO. Title tag and meta tags. Most search engines give little or no relevance to some of these, however, since no one really knows how each engine factors them out, they are still important steps in optimizing any website.
1: The TITLE tag
Here is an example title tag that should appear between the tags on your web page(s):
The title tag is very important. Why? Because search engines don’t just give it value in relation to optimization, SEs use it in their search results. Search ANY search engine and you will see the content of this tag used in the anchor text of every website’s links. Here is a little experiment. Follow the Google link (opens in a new window) and take a look. google experiment
There are over 28,100,000 pages on Google with the title tag
Therefore, most of the displayed web page links do not have a title. Why? Because whoever created these web pages used an editing program that adds the title tag, and they never changed the title text.
So what should be in the title tag? The name of your business or website with the “keyword phrase” you are targeting. For example, your company sells “watches.” This is a broad search term and using it alone may not work for you. There are an estimated 42,500,000 search results on Google. However, when searching for the term “swiss watches” I get an estimated 2,760,000 results. The probability of your site appearing in the first 3 pages of Google is much more realistic using “Swiss clocks”. Also, the keyword “watches” is still present, so you’re actually targeting both terms.
Here’s a nice title tag using this example:
Be short and concise. Targeting too many keywords can “lower” the relevance of your website.
2: The DESCRIPTION meta tag
Here is an example of a description meta tag that should appear between the tags on your web page(s):
The description meta tag is less important for optimization, but is still used by search engines. Google, for example, will use the body text of web pages, alt image tags, and yes, even parts of the description meta tag will show up at times. Body text and alt tags will be discussed later in these articles.
So in my opinion it is important enough to use it. The best way to use it is to put your keyword phrase inside this meta tag “once”, then split the phrase and add the keywords again separately. But keep it readable and avoid too many commas. This can be seen as “spam”, so don’t do it or your site could be blacklisted and ignored by search engines. Also, use two sentences maximum and avoid “sales pitches” like “Best store ever” etc.
Here’s a nice description meta tag using the “watches” example above:
Note that “SEO” and “TOOLS” appear twice, but the second time is split with the term “SOFTWARE” (SEO software is a secondary specific keyword phrase).
3: The KEYWORD meta tag
Here is an example of a keyword meta tag that should appear between the tags on your web page(s):
The keyword meta tag is believed to be one of the LEAST recognized meta tags by search engines. It carries very little weight when it comes to search engine optimization. However, it is not ignored by all engines. For example, through my own experiment, I used a single keyword (such as spaloof, which means nothing) that had very few or no results when searching for it. After being indexed, SearchBliss appeared at the top of MSN. The keyword was NOT anywhere else in SearchBliss. Only in the meta tag of the keyword. This tells me that some search engines give the keyword meta tag some weight. So as a result I still use the keyword meta tag.
I suggest adding your target keywords 3-4 times without REPEATING THE SAME TERM. This is considered “spam”. Spam example: swiss watches, swiss watches, swiss watches,… This is more commonly known as “keyword stuffing”. It also applies to everything else covered in these articles.
Here’s a good keyword meta tag using the “SEO Tools” example:
Note that the keywords listed 3 times (SEO and tools) are not only broken up using other keyword terms, they are never too close together. I do this by adding other keywords/phrases in between the ones with the target terms. The term “SEO tools” only appears together once.
There are also other meta tags like “abstract”, “robots”, etc. But I feel there is no need to cover this. I believe that they are not an important part of search engine optimization and have no use in these articles. Create titles and meta tags now, then optimize your meta tags.
