SEO Resources

SEO – Meta Tags

If you have a great website that is both creative and resourceful, and you still don’t have enough traffic your web site needs to have meta tag. It doesn’t matter what some search engine expert told you. Fact is that 1000’s of search engines still use your Meta content to tell searchers what your site is about.

What is a meta tag?

The purpose of the Meta optimization tag is twofold: to help the page rank highly for the words that were contained within it, as well as to provide a nice description in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Meta-tags look a little like this one:

< meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=iso-8859-1″ />
< META NAME=”keywords” CONTENT=”Keywords separated by commas”>
< META NAME=”description” CONTENT=”Description of the page”>
< META NAME=”robots” CONTENT=”FOLLOW,INDEX”>

It should be at the top of your page on EVERY page. I understand you might not be a meta tag expert but that is no excuse. There are websites that already exist and that let you make your meta-tags for free….. With all the bells and whistles.

A good place to generate meta-tags on the fly is http://www.submitcorner.com/Tools/Meta/.

Meta-tags and page titles are really tied in together so don’t overlook your page titles.

SEO – Page titles

Authors should use the title element to identify the contents of a document. Since users often consult documents out of context, authors should provide context rich page titles. The title element should ideally be less than 64 characters in length. While there is no limit on the length of a title, developers should be aware that the title element may be truncated if too long.

Page titles or title elements, are one of the most important factors when developing a search engine friendly web page. The section of your web pages. We prefer and highly recommend that the page title come right after the opening tag of your web pages.

The secret to using page titles right is to keep them short and sweet. Don’t use filler text, and/or/how/when, etc… Keep it focused on your targeted keywords that you got from your keyword research.

Your keyword research should be a factor in your meta-tag writing and your page titles both.

Planning before starting to make your website can really help you identify an internal linking structure and linking method for your site that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Keyword research is about the most important part of your success. You can be great at implementing all the proper SEO techniques, but it will all be in futile if you target the wrong keywords.

Before you code a line, or write a single word down, you should begin doing your keyword research.

The first thing I want you to do is go to goodkeywords.com and download the keyword tool they have there. It will allow you to search a keyword and for that search keyword it will also tell you the number of times a keyword or keyword combination has been searched for over a time period.

Now you’re just starting out, and your chances of getting ranked highly for a generic keyword is very slim. Instead of trying to optimize “keyword”, try to optimize something a little narrower like, “Keyword Research”.

You really shouldn’t write for the engines. Write your content so it’s readable, fresh, and above all navigable.

If you write about your keywords, and use them in your content you will be just fine.

Remember, sites that are written for HUMANS, with SEO in mind will do better in the long run, than sites that cheat.

Your ultimate goal when you do research for keywords (both high paying keywords and keywords that get a lot of traffic), is to find a happy medium between the amount of traffic you can expect if you rank well and the amount of competition you will have. If you can’t rank well for your chosen keyword, try to rank well for a keyword combination.

In order to be successful in getting the high positions in the search engines you also need to know how much competition there is for a word. Keywords or keyword phrases that are very competitive need more than just a well optimized page to rank high in the search engines. Off-the-page factors like link popularity and anchor texts in the links that point at your web page are very important to consider when choosing keywords.

In conclusion keyword research is the first and most decisive step you will take when optimizing your web site. It will determine how successful you will be.

Your keyword research should be a factor in your meta-tag writing and your page titles.