Search Engine Tips and Tricks

Keywords

Define keywords:

for your page and use them.
as you would when you search for items on the Internet.
that your users would use when searching or looking for your "product".
that do not use "stop words" -- particles like "and", "the", "a", "an", "or", etc.

`HTML Title Tag: <title></title>`

The HTML title tag should describe the content of your web page in one brief descriptive phrase "chock-full" of keywords. It is likely to be used in search engines' results and definitely browser bookmarks and browser title bars. It is one of the first items a search engines' spider sees on your page. Place the HTML title tag right after the opening head tag (<head></head>) if possible.

The HTML title tag:

is the most important part of your web page.
should appeal to people and search engines.
needs to interest and appeal to the reader.
the most noticed piece of information of a search engine's query results.

Note: Most major search engines display approximately 60 characters from a page's title tag in the title of a search results.

`HTML META Description Tag: <meta name="description" />`

The meta description tag describes your page's content, giving search engines' spiders an accurate summary filled with multiple keywords. The meta description tag should contain multiple keywords organized in a logical sentence. Place the keywords at the beginning of your description and close to each other to achieve the best possible rankings.

Use unique and descriptive words or phrases in your meta description tags. Description length should be approximately 155-160 characters.

Note: Many times, meta description content is used by search engines as descriptive text for a web page.

`HTML META Keywords Tag: <meta name="keywords" />`

A meta keyword tag lists all the keywords for which you would like search engines to rank your site. List them in order of importance or relevance. List up to 20 BUT don't overdo it.

Note: Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking - Monday, September 21, 2009

Note: with each item below, do NOT use exact words or phrases more than once; variations of capitalization / lowercase are not the same: For example, the string "Example" is not the same as "example".

`HTML Body Tag: <body></body>`

Page content is the second most important area of a web page when optimizing for search engines. Include grammatically correct and appropriate content tags such as header tags (<h1>-<h6>), strong tags (<strong>), emphasis tags (<em>) and other tags to designate content semantic differences. Do not use such tags for stylizing; use CSS for presentation and styles. Search engines tend to give a bit more weight to keywords found in these tags. The logic is that if the web site creator thought they were important enough to highlight, they're more likely to represent key content for that page.

Include one heading one (<h1></h1>) tag on each web page. The heading one content should incorporate page title (<title></title>) information.
Incorporate other headings (<h2></h2>, <h3></h3>, <h4></h4>, <h5></h5> and <h6></h6>) when needed. Always order headers appropriately.
incorporate strong tags, <strong></strong>, to apply meaning or semantic to an element.
incorporate emphasis tags, <em></em>, to apply meaning or semantic to an element.
other tags used to designate content differences.

Note: The HTML bold tag, <b><b/>, is a presentational element for formatting text to apply font weight; the HTML strong tag, <strong></strong>, is used to apply semantic meaning to an element.

Note: The HTML italics tag, <i></i>, is a presentational element for formatting text to apply font style; the HTML emphasis tag, <em></em>, is used to apply semantic meaning to an element.

Note: While CSS is very useful in designing and preferred, keep in mind that specialized tags that create specialized styles will not necessarily be beneficial in search engine optimization.