Search Engine
Basics: Title And META-Tags
-- by Legitimate Marketing,
legitmarketing(a)yahoo.com
-- http://www.redtienda.com/english/newsletter69.htm#1Your Title-tag and
META-tag are simply lines of text inserted into
the HTML code of each of your web pages.
The
Title-tag is one of the most important pieces of
information for a search engine. The Title-tag
should describe exactly what the web page
contains. It should contain keywords, but not
repeats, of terms you hope to be found for. It
should also be as readable as possible. The
Title-tag will be the first thing someone sees in
a search result.
The
Title-tag should be no longer than 70 characters
and should contain words and phrases that
accurately describe the content of a page. Try to
make the Title-tags located throughout your site
unique and relevant. Every word in the Title
should be contained somewhere on the page they
are used for. Research has also shown that a
strong call to action will usually produce more
clicks than a basic description.
The
META-tag is used to store information about a web
page but is not actually displayed in a web
browser. For example, META-tags provide
information such as what application was used to
create the page, a description of the page, and
keywords that are relevant to the page. Many
search engines use the information stored in
META-tags when they index web pages.
As I
stated earlier, META-tag information is not
displayed in a web browser. However, if you view
the source code of any web page you will see the
HTML code behind that page. To see the code,
simply go to any website using Internet Explorer
and click "view" then
"source."
NOTE:
It's okay to view, but please don't steal someone
else's source code. Imagine how you would feel,
if someone did that to you.
For quite
some time now, META-tags have been the focus of a
particular field of marketing research known as
search engine optimization, or SEO. In the mid to
late 1990s, search engines were heavily reliant
on META-tag data to correctly classify a web
page.
Webmasters
quickly learned the significance of writing META-
tags correctly, as it frequently led to higher
rankings on search engines--and thus, more
traffic to their websites.
As search
engine traffic achieved greater significance in
online marketing campaigns, SEO's who were
well-versed in how search engines perceive a
website exploded onto the scene. These SEO's used
a variety of techniques (legitimate, and
otherwise) to improve search engine rankings for
their clients.
Over the
last few years, however, search engines have
become much less reliant on META-tags, as many
webmasters cheated by using inappropriate tactics
and keywords to direct as much traffic as
possible to their sites.
And while
not nearly as important as they once were, some
search engines, still take META-tags into some
consideration when delivering results.
In
addition, search engines have become smarter,
penalizing websites that cheat by repeating the
same keyword(s) several times in order to get a
boost in the search engines.
Make no
mistake, cheaters pay a heavy price, indeed.
Instead of ascending in ranking, cheating
websites actually descend in ranking or, in some
instances, are deleted from the search engine's
database altogether.
A word of
advice: Because search engines are constantly
changing their algorithms, don't spend a lot of
time on search engine optimization. That should
just be one part of your overall marketing
strategy. It's much more important to form
alliances with businesses similar to yours, and
increase the number of links to your site.
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