Meta tag optimisation techniques

Research has shown that 80% of website visitors from search engines come from the first 30 listings (the first 3 pages of results). As a result it is sensible to do what we can to achieve these positions on the right keywords.

The position at which a search engine lists your website when a keyword search is made depends on how its spider evaluates the relevancy of your site to the word searched on.

Here are some simple techniques to maximise the relevancy of your site on the words that make sense to your business and those that your potential customers would be searching on.

Contents:

Meta Tag Optimization Techniques

A. Keywords Optimisation

B. Title Tag Optimisation

C. Content Optimisation

- Keywords in Header Tags

- Keywords Prominence in the Body Text

- Keyword Prominence in the Home Page

D. Meta Tag Optimisation

- Description Meta Tag

- Keywords Meta Tag

E. Alt Tag Optimisation

- Nesting Multiple Tags

F.Comment Tag Optimisation

G. Hyperlink Optimisation

H. What not to Do

Meta Tag Optimisation Techniques

A. Keywords Optimization

To get listed correctly in the search engines each page of your site needs to be optimised for the correct keywords. Choosing the keywords is critical so here are some tips on choosing them.

1. Use specific phrases (different from competitors) that describe your type of product or services, as the competition on general terms is so great that it is likely that you will not rank well on them. The visitors created should be much more targeted and of a higher quality if they come from a specific term search.

Example: Gift Baskets or Gift Hampers. The term is too general and competitive. But if you use : Gourmet Gift Baskets, Biscuit & Jam Gift Hampers, Hospital Gift Hampers, Mother Day Gift Hampers, Valentine Day Gift Baskets, Body care Baskets, Wedding Hampers, and soon, you will rank much better on competitors. Does it make sense?

2. Check out your competition. Make a search using keywords that you favour, and once on a site, view the source code (in Windows Explorer view click "View" and then "Source") and look at the keywords they use as meta tags.

3. Develop a list of phrases (following the tips on this page) for each page that you wish to submit. Think at any of your page as a separate submission with a separate optimisation approach.

4. Use an automated program to check your keywords/keyphrases. Don't waste your time optimising the wrong keyword: check it first with Wordtracker or another software

B. Title Tag Optimisation

The Title Tag is the most important factor when optimising a webpage. The Title Tag is also what the engines usually use for the title of the listing in their search results.

What and where:

Let's clear up any doubt about the distinction between Page Title and Title Tag. The Page Title is the heading placed at the beginning of your visible page in Windows view. The Title Tag is anything contained between <title> and </title> in the HTML view. Furthermore, The Title Tag is what you see (often, not always) after searching for a certain topic in the search engine listing. Let's assume that you are looking for "bookkeeping in sydney" on Google. You'll might find the following:

(Title) Sydney Bookkeeping, accounting, MYOB and data entry (Description): Sydney Bookkeeping is focused on providing accurate data entry of all financial transactions, with reliable and timely reporting of that information.

The phrase hyperlinked is part of the Title Tag (the 7 words underlined). The Description Tag is all the writing in grey. Check at the top of this page to find an example. Click "View" and then "Source" (in Explorer View) to get into the HTML script. Title Tag and Description Tag can be found.

between the html: <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags and

within the html:<TITLE>Your title tag here</TITLE>

Page Title Tips

Write a descriptive Page Title for each page and remove as many "filler" words from the title, such as "the," "and," etc. This Page Title will appear hyperlinked on the search engines when your page is found. Entice surfers to click on the title by making it a bit provocative.

The Title Tag should be less the 60 characters for Google and the most important Search Engines. However, after those 60 chars you can place between 25-65 characters. You won't be able to read anyone of these words in window mode, but Spiders will. For other search engine you can place up to 110 words

Title Tag tips:

A. You should include 1-2 of your most important phrases in the Title Tag, but do not just list keywords. Make it an understandable sentence.

B. Make your title attractive so that as a listing, it will get the click throughs.

C. Put the keyphrases and the keywords at the start of the tag, so the space restriction on search listings do not cut them off.

D. Each page of your site should have its own title tag, with its own keywords that related to that specific page.

C. Content Optimisation

The page content is also just as important to achieve better search engine rankings. The content is the text that a visitor to your site would read.

The search engine spiders read the content just like a visitor and they are looking for your keyword phrases.

Content tips:

A. For best results each page should have at least 200 words of copy on it.

B. The text should include your keyword phrases, but should also be readable and understandable.

C. Be absolutely sure to use those phrases that you have used in your other tags on that page (i.e. metas, alt, headings, title, etc.).

For more detailed information visit: Optimized Body Description Tips

Header Tags

Include Your Keywords in Header Tags H1, H2, H3.

Search engines consider words that appear in the page headline and sub heads to be important to the page, so make sure your desired keywords and phrase appear in one or two header tags.

For more detailed information about headlines visit: Compelling Headlines

Make Sure Your Keywords Are in the First Paragraph of Your Body Text (keyword Prominence).

It's not always possible. Search engines expect that your first paragraph will contain the important keywords for the document, but you cannot always stuff keywords here, however. Google expects a "keyword density" in the entire body text area of maybe 1.5% to 2% for a word that should rank high

"Keyword Prominence" in the Home Page

Plan to use some descriptive keywords along with your business name on your home page. If you are specialized in Web Marketing, and that's what people will be searching for, don't just use your company name "Adrenalyn," use " Web Marketing by Adrenalyn". Words people are most likely to search on put first in the title (called "keyword prominence").

For more detailed information visit: Keyword Prominence

D. Meta Tag Optimisation

Many people incorrectly believe that good meta tags are all that is required to achieve good listings, which is incorrect. The engines look at a combination of all the best search engine tips to determine your listings, not just your metas. There are two meta tags that can help your rankings - Keywords Meta Tags and Description Meta Tags.

What and where:

Description Meta Tags have to be placed anywhere between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags within the HTML

Description Meta Tag

example:

Write a Description Meta Tag.

Some search engines include this description below your hyperlinked title, though many don't. This sentence should describe the contents of the body text of the webpage, using the main keywords and keyphrases used on this page. If you include keywords that aren't used on the webpage you could hurt yourself.

How to Prepare a Description Meta Tag

Before preparing a webpage, write the description first in a sentence or two, using each of the important keywords and keyphrases included in the content. You might not be inspired enough to write the definitive description. Just write something: you can always revise it later.

Meta Description tips:

A. Describe the content of your page while trying to entice visitors to click.

B. Include your most important keyword phrases, especially those in your Title Tag and Page Copy.

C. Place the most important keywords at the beginning of your description, to avoid having any search engine cut off your keywords, if they limit the length of listings.

D. Your Description Meta Tag should not exceed 200 characters

Keyword Meta Tag

What and where:

Keywords Meta Tags have to be placed anywhere between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags within the HTML.

<META content="(Your keyphrases with your keywords)"name=keywords>

example:

How to Prepare a Keyword Meta Tag

The Keywords Meta Tag is no longer used for ranking, but it is sometimes used for paid inclusion technologies (i.e. Yahoo Express Submit), but who knows when search engines will consider it important again? So, strip out the common words, leaving just the meaty words and phrases.

Meta Keyword tips:

A. Only use keywords and keyphrases that you have also used in the copy of your page, title tag, meta description, and other tags.

B. Don't forget plurals of your keywords and mis-spellings.

C. Try not to repeat one word too many times in the keyword meta, say 5 times.

D. Your Keywords Meta Tag should not exceed 1000 characters

E. Alt Tag Optimisation

Did you know that any images on your page can help your listings too? Each image can include a phrase or two in the image name.

What and where:

The alt tag can be added to any image but the description should be no more than a sentence:

Example

Alt Tag Optimisation Tips

A. Use the phrases that you have also used in the copy of your page, title tag, meta description, and other tags.

B. Only use a couple of phrases for each image alt tag.

C. Describe the image - do not just list the phrases.

D. Include some Keywords in the image description

F. Comment Tag Optimisation

At times, text on your site may not be optimally created for search engine spidering. To combat this deficiency, consider using comment tags above your text blocks.

For some minor search engine this will help improve your search engine ranking, it can also help you to better organize your site for easier editing. Instead, none of the major engines consider the contents of comment tags any more, so there's no reason to insert your keywords in those tags.

Comments will allow you to separate and add information to the code of a webpage behind the scenes. The notes will only be visible when viewing the raw HTML code for your page.

"How can I take advantage of this HTML feature?" The implementation is very simple. To start a comment, you enter

<!--

type in your comments and when you are done commenting, close the comment with

-->

The end result would look like:

Then, your body text here (just after the comment tag)

For further information visit: Comment Tag Optimisation

Nesting Multiple Tags

Learning how to properly nest multiple tags around one block of text or an object is crucial to successfully coding your web pages. Just be sure your opening tags have been put in a certain order and the closing tags all appear in the exact opposite order.

For example:

<TAG1><TAG2><TAG3> [text or object here] </TAG3></TAG2></TAG1>

Making sure you have your multiple tags nested properly takes a little getting used to, but if you get into the habit at the beginning it will become second nature to you in short order.

Keyword synonyms

In meta tags, comment fields or image alt tags, strive for a variety of relative words to gain deeper search engine indexing. For example, if your site is about dogs, instead of always using "dog" as a keyword, try "canine" or "hound" etc. To find related keywords, try this great tool: thesaurus.com

G. Hyperlink Optimisation

Search engines evaluate the links that you have. Some engines look for keywords in the hyperlinks and any text immediately surrounding the hyperlinks. You should include your most important keyword phrases in the link, and possibly the surrounding text.

What and where:

A text based hyperlink is a standard HTML hyperlink:

Hyperlink Optimisation Tips

A. Place your phrases in the link itself and in the text immediately before or after the link.

B. Do not keyword stuff. Make sure your link and text are still readable and understandable.

For further information visit: Hyperlink Url Tag Optimisation

H. What not to do

There are several approaches which the search engines deem to be spamming and should not be attempted due to the risk of being banned by the engine for a listing.

A. Do not list keywords anywhere except in your keywords meta tag. By "list" this means literally list - keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3, keyword 4, etc.

B. Do not use the same colour text on your page as the page's background colour. This is typically used to keyword stuff a web page which a search engine can detect and will view as spam.

C. Do not use the same tag a number of times. For example, using more than one title tag.

D. Do not duplicate a page of your site for submission purposes.

E. Do not optimise for words unrelated to your sites content.

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