Writing SE friendly HTML

A Quick Guide into the WORLD OF SEO.

What the Big Guys dont want you finding out.

The <title> tag

The <title> tag is the text shown in the windows-bar of the browser window, is the most important element of the webpage. You must include your most important keyword phrase(s) in this spot.

However, make sure that you write a phrase that makes sense. Many search engines may use this line in their result listings, and you want people to click on that link.

Do not put the name of the site first, unless the name contains the essential keyword phrase.

Instead of

<title>Alfred's Reading
Emporium</title>

go for

<title>Used books, magazines,
periodicals, posters and postcards from Alfred's
Reading Emporium in Boulder, Colorado</title>.>

Some SEO-experts would even argue that you should drop "Alfred" altogether. The only drawback with this is that the browsers use this text when generating bookmarks/favorites.

Please note the inclusion of the geographical location. If your business or activity is limited to one district, say so. Searchers are prone to include geographic names in their queries.

Some suggest that it helps to use multiple <title> tags. Maybe it does in some search engines. Still, it tastes of spam (cheating), and the risk of getting banned by the search engine does not make it worthwhile.

The <meta> tags

Meta tags are text written into the HTML code that describes your webpage to the search engines, but which is not visible in a browser window. They are placed after the </title> tag, but before the <body> tag.

There are only three meta tags of importance for search engine optimization. All others can (and should) be left out. Here are examples of the three:

The NAME part of the tag, tells the search engine what kind of meta tag this is.

The keywords metatag

In the KEYWORDS meta tag you may enter keywords and key phrases of relevance to the content of the page. Please note the double quotation marks. Many choose to separate the keyword phrases with commas.

We normally do not include commas, partly because they take up space, and partly because leaving them out makes it possible to include more combinations of keywords. "web search tutorial" will give you no less than three queries: "web search tutorial," "web search," and "search tutorial" in addition to the three individual words.

Do not repeat the same keyword more than two or three times. However, if you must repeat it, keep the occurrences apart.

Do not enter keyword phrases that are of no relevance to the content of the page.

Some SEO experts argue that you should not include any keyword phrases that are not present in the visible text on the webpage, as some search engines may interpret this as spam.

We have not found proof of this (unless you enter phrases of an "adult" nature to your page on home knitting).You may also enter misspellings, and variations of the same word (capitalized/non-capitalized, plural/singular). However, do not go overboard on this.

You should note, however, that there are very few search engines that take the keyword metatag into consideration these days. Yahoo! and Ask apparently do take it into considerations, which is why you probably should include one -- just to be sure.

The description metatag

The DESCRIPTION meta tag is important as some search engines use this text for the description given in the search result listings.

This text should be a normal sentence that gives the searcher exact information on what you have to offer. Do include the main keyword phrase(s). Note that no search engine displays more than 250 characters (spaces, commas and periods included), and often less. This is why you should enter the most important part of your description first.

The robots tag

The listed version of the ROBOTS- tag (ALL) tells the search engine to index the page. However, the CONTENT="ALL" alternative is actually superfluous. Search engines will also index pages without this tag.

indicates that a robot should neither index a document, nor analyze it for links.

means that a robot should not index this document, but that it should index the pages it is pointing to.

Note though, that if you need to limit the search engines access to your site, it is better to put a robots.txt file in the root directory of your site (provided that you have your own domain). Read our article on the robots.txt file and search engine optimization.

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June 4, 2009 - 10:05am

kamal

Joined: Dec 18 2008

Yeah, those are the basics.

Another interesting thing to look into is LSI - Lemantic Synthetic Indexing (I think).

But honestly, as long as you follow the above, and just write good content, search engines will love you just fine. Just don't forget about the backlinks.