How search engines and directories can help your site
Published: 20 Jan 2004 14:45 GMT
Title your pages effectively
Make sure each of your pages has a descriptive title. Search engines usually give the most weight to the words between a page's title tags. You can use this to your advantage by adding a short, descriptive phrase in the title of each of your pages, which will make sure certain keywords get the attention they deserve. For example, the KillerGardens home page might include the following description in its title to emphasise its specialties:
<TITLE>KillerGardens - The online source for man-eating plants and landscaping</TITLE>
Search engines return their results in the form of titles linked to each site, so descriptive titles draw people to your site. A page with just the name of the site in its title is less compelling than one with a description. And if you don't include title tags at all, your site will be listed in search results as "No Title" or something similarly uninteresting.
Make the most of tags
You can control how search engines catalogue your site with two types of <META> tags. <META> tags are part of the HTML code that some search engines, such as AltaVista and Infoseek, look for but most visitors to your pages never see.
<META> description tags let you specify a short summary that appears below the page's title on a search response. (If a page doesn't have a <META> description, search engines usually list the page's first dozen or so words instead.)
<META> keyword tags let you specify the keywords that a search robot should give precedence to when cataloging the page. <META> keywords are typically given less importance than words in the title, but more importance than words found in the page's body.
<META> tags typically go after the title and between the head tags of an HTML page:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>KillerGardens - The online source for man-eating plants and landscaping</TITLE>
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="KillerGardens is located in Berkeley, California, and specializes in man-eating plants and landscaping.">
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="gardens, gardening, plants, landscaping, dangerous, man-eating, Venus flytraps, fertilizers">
</HEAD>
Make sure your keyword list includes both general and specific words related to your site. It's best to make them plural where appropriate and to include derivatives, since you can't rely on all search engines to account for such instances. Having trouble thinking of keywords? Check out CNET's list of its top 100 search terms.
To ensure that you're making the most of your <META> tags, go to the Meta Medic site and submit your site's URL. This free Perl script checks your page's <META> tags and suggests ways to improve the descriptions or keywords.
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