What are meta tags? Meta tags are hidden HTML tags used to describe various aspects about a Web page. The two most important meta tags are the meta description and meta keywords tags. Let’s take a closer look at each meta tag. Sample meta tags: Meta description tags The contents of meta description tags are indexed by some search engines as the page description in its search engine results. However, meta description tags is often misused, with misleading or even false descriptions about a page. As a result, the relevancy of search results are often compromised, so search engines have begun to de-emphasize the importance and even totally ignore the contents of the tag. Some search engines, such as AltaVista and Inktomi, do still index the contents of a meta description tag for its search results. But if the meta description tag is missing, the search engine will usually extract a description from the body text. In general, search engines will index the first 135-249 characters of the meta description tag contents. Write a description that sells the page. Include the most important keywords at the beginning of the tag. But, don’t just fill the description tag with keywords. Meta keywords tags The contents of a meta keyword tag is used to help define the important keywords of a page. It sounds good in theory. However, in practice, the meta keywords tag is often misused, including the addition of excessive or irrelevant keywords. So much so, that most, but not all, search engines totally ignore the contents of the meta keywords tag. Inktomi is the only search engine that indexes the meta keywords tag. Since Inktomi provides search results for top search engines such as MSN, HotBot, and Overture, I would say it’s probably worth the effort to include the meta keywords tag in your Web pages. If you do decide to use the meta keywords tag, I suggest that you only include the most important keyword phrase in the content of the tag. The meta keywords tag should be placed just after the meta description tag.

Guide to link popularity and how it affects your search engine rankings. Link popularity refers to the number of links pointing to and from related sites and is an extremely important method of improving your site’s relevancy in search engines. There are three types of links that will increase the link popularity of your site; internal, incoming and, to a lesser extent, outgoing links. Let’s take a look at each one in more detail. Internal links Internal link popularity refers to the number of links to and from pages within a site. I recommend cross linking your important related pages. This helps search engine spiders find and index your most important pages quicker, especially if some pages are buried deep within your site. Site maps Site maps are visual models of a site’s content that allows users to find specific content or page. Site maps are like interactive table of contents, with links leading to most, if not all, pages of a web site. Site maps are organized hierarchically, breaking down the site’s information into increasingly specific subject areas. If you have more than a dozen pages, I recommend you include a site map in your site. The add a link to the site map page from the home page, and on other pages. This way search engine spiders will find the site map, crawl the links and index your entire web site. Incoming links Incoming link popularity refers to links pointing to a site from other related sites. In addition, there are two types of incoming links: 1. Links from sites you control I recommend cross linking all of your web sites. Select keywords that describe the site you’re linking to. The reason for doing this is because some of the major search engines, such as Google, place a great importance on the text used within, and close to, links. 2. Links from sites you don’t control There are two ways of finding sites to link to yours. The best way to get other sites to link to yours is to ask them politely. And the best way to find likely candidates is to ask web sites that link to your competition. To find out which sites are linking to your a particular competitor, visit a search engine such as Google and enter, “link:” followed by the competitors domain name (with and without “www”). For example: link:google.com link:www.yahoo.com To check the link popularity of your own sites, simply use your own domain name. Do not forget that all the sites listed in the same category as yours in the major web directories, such as Yahoo! and Open Directory Project, are ideal link candidates too. Once you have compiled a list of related sites, add a link to them in your site. Then send an email to each web site owner informing them that you have linked to their site and politely ask them for a link back to your site. Another way of finding sites to link to yours is to find sites that accept site submissions. To find such sites, visit a search engine, such as Google, and search for: “add url” “your keywords” Include the quotation marks to ensure the search engine only return pages with the exact search phrases you enter. Also try replacing, “add url” with one of the following sets of search phrases: add site, add link, submit url, submit site, submit link In addition, you can also find site submission pages by searching for the actual page. So, try replacing the “add url” search phrase with one of the following page names: addurl.html, addsite.html, addlink.html, submiturl.html, submitsite.html, submitlink.html, add-url.html, add-site.html, add-link.html, submit-url.html, submit-site.html, submit-link.html, add_url.html, add_site.html, add_link.html, submit_url.html, submit_site.html, submit_link.html Outgoing links Outgoing links refers to links pointing to other related sites from your site. Search engine spiders will crawl your site’s outgoing links and determine that the content of the sites you link to are related to the content of your own site. How much importance outgoing links add to a site’s link popularity rating is still being debated by search engine optimization specialists. Link keywords It is important to name your internal and outgoing links carefully. Since keywords play a major part in determining the relevancy of a Web page, it is essential that they are also included in link text. Link quality The quality of the links is just as important, if not more, than the number of links to your site. The types of sites you should concentrate on getting links from include major search engines (Google.com), popular search portals (MSN.com), web directories (Yahoo.com and Open Directory Project – dmoz.org), high trafficked sites (eBay.com and Amazon.com), news sites (CNN.com), and sites related to your site’s theme. Link exchanges and farms Do not get links from link exchange sites and link farms. Link farms are networks of heavily cross linked pages on one or more sites, with the sole intention of improving the link popularity of those pages and sites. All of the major search engines consider such links as spam, so stay clear of these types of links.

Find out how keywords can have a huge influence on your search engine rankings. Keywords contained within a Web page are the most important element to achieving high search engine rankings. Keywords are by no means the only relevant factor in how search engines rank a Web page. Other factors also count. But the majority of search engine optimization strategies involve a Webpage’s keywords in one form or another. Therefore, it’s fair to say that keywords are the most important element to achieving top search engine rankings. After all, if a page had no text at all, there is nothing for a search engine to index! Perfect Keywords You should create each Web page by concentrating on the following (in order of importance): one keyword or keyword phrase matching the page content and most frequently used by the target audience and has the least number of competing pages in the search engines. Admittedly this is not easy and is not always possible. And how do you go about finding the one perfect keyword phrase that matches the page content, that is most frequently used by the target audience, and has the least number of competing pages in the search engines? Top keywords Fortunately, there are tools to help you find out what those all important keywords are. Keyword frequency Keyword frequency refers to the number of times a keyword phrase appears within a page. The theory is that the more times a keyword/s appears within a Webpage, the more relevant the page is likely to be for someone searching those keywords. But do not abuse the system by repeating the same keywords over and over again. Keyword density Keyword density is the ratio (percentage) of keywords contained within the total number of indexable words within a Web page. In general, I suggest using a keyword density ratio in the range of 2-8%. Keyword prominence Keyword prominence is about improving the prominence of keywords by placing important keywords at the top of a Web page. Basically, the closer your important keywords are to the start of a page, a sentence, title or meta tag, the better. Keyword proximity Keyword proximity refers to the closeness between two or more keywords. In general, the closer the keywords are, the better. For example: Internet keyword marketing and analysis tools Internet keyword analysis and marketing tools If someone searched for “keyword marketing,” a Web page containing the first sentence is likely to rank higher than the second, because the two keywords are closer together. Word stemming Word stemming is a concept used by some search engines to return search results that include keywords that extend beyond what you searched for. For example, a search with the keyword “optimize” might return results for, “optimizes,” “optimizer,” and “optimizers.” In general, always try to use the longer version of a keyword, especially plurals. Stop words Stop words are common words and characters ignored by most search engines. For example: a and are as at be for from he his I in is it of on that the they this to was Ignoring stop words helps to reduce the amount of storage needed to index the billions of pages of data, and enhance the speed and relevancy of the search results. Only full-text search engines, such as AltaVista, index every single word on a Web page. As such, always try to use keywords instead of stop words as much as possible. Admittedly, it maybe a bit more difficult to read, but I think it is worth the sacrifice, in the cause of trying to achieve higher search engine rankings. Keywords in domain names Keywords in domain names can help to improve search engine rankings. I generally recommend registering keyword rich domain names for search engine optimization campaigns. Keywords separated by hyphens I have yet to find conclusive proof that separating keywords in a domain name improves rankings. But I do suggest that you do use this format, just to be on the safe side. After all, you wouldn’t want a search engine to index the wrong keywords. For example, what are the keywords in this domain name, “newshut.com?” Are they “news” and “hut,” or “new” and “shut?” You can see how a search engine can easily index different keywords from those you had in mind. If the domain name is, “news-hut.com,” it would be clear to a search engine exactly what the keywords are. Keywords in directories and file names Its a good idea to register keyword rich domain names, it’s also a good idea to name directories and file names after the keywords you’re targeting.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves making Web pages more search engine friendly to promote them as the most relevant solutions for the search engines’ users. The improvements can mean the difference between achieving top rankings, which can result in thousands of monthly visitors, and being lost in oblivion. Why is search engine optimization important? A good SEO consultant will explain that it’s basically about following search engine rules. If your Web page fits the criterias that a search engine considers the most important factors in terms of relevance, then it will reward you with a top ranking. SEO consultants simply modify Web pages to fit these criterias. This gives the Web pages a better chance of being selected by the search engines as the most relevant page for the search query. The importance of keyword research The Internet is basically a massive disorganized library. Search engines are like librarians. They both try to organize the content, so that people can find what they’re looking for without too much effort. With books, librarians have the benefit of bibliographic databases and the information on the book covers to help them organize their library. Search engines don’t have such a luxury. There aren’t databases of every single Web page ever created. The Internet is just too big. There’s too much information to index. The only way a search engine can try to organize the mass of information available on the Internet is by the use of keywords and links. It makes sense to think that if a Web page contains enough keywords related to a certain topic, it should be relevant to a search for information on that particular topic. So part of the SEO consultant’s job is to make sure the Web pages target the keywords that people search for when looking for products, services or information related to what the Web page offers. The variety of keywords used to search for the same product, service or information is quite staggering. For example, here are the most popular keyword phrases used by people searching for information on search engine optimization: search engine optimization search engine ranking search engine optimisation (notice the English – as opposed to American – spelling of optimization?) search engine placement website optimisation search engine positioning web site optimization (notice a space between “web site?”) high search engine ranking web page optimisation search engine promotion top search engine ranking high search engine rankings search engine rankings better search engine placement web site optimisation high search engine placement search engines optimization website optimization search engine optimizations (notice the “s” at the end of optimization?) high search engine positioning engine optimization resources You notice how many different variations people use to search for information on the same topic? The fact is, unless a page contains all of the keywords in a search query, then it will have very little of appearing at the top of the rankings. Before Web pages can be optimized, you must conduct research to determine which keywords to target. This involves finding targeted keywords, determining their popularity, assessing the amount of competition, and then deciding which keywords to use in your Web pages.

Meta Tags >>

Most of the major search engines give the most relevance to keywords in the title tags within the Web page. As such, every page should have a title tag. In general, I have found that short keyword rich descriptions in title tags work best. Good title tag: Not so good title tag: Header tags Many of the major search engines place a lot of relevance on keywords in header tags (H1, H2 and H3). As such I recommend that you sprinkle keyword rich header tags on your Web pages. Sample header tags:

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Positioning

ALT text Always include ALT text to describe the contents of an image. Use keyword rich descriptions in the ALT text, as some search engines index the keywords. You will also provide a text description to visitors with slow download connections or have their images turned off. But to ensure that the text is visible, you must set the image’s width and height dimensions. The use of ALT text also enable visually disabled visitors using screen readers, or reviewers, to interpret the image on the screen. Images can be translated, only if there is alternative text describing the image. Also consider adding a period “.” at the end of the ALT text, so that someone hearing the page can tell where one image stops and another starts. Sample ALT text within an image tag:

How to submit your web site to the top web directories. Here are the top 3 web directories that you should submit to. Yahoo! Yahoo! is the leading web directory generating hundreds of millions of search related page views every day. Yahoo! offers 2 submission programs: Standard submission is for non-commercial web sites only. The service is free. However, Yahoo! make no time guarantees of when your site will be reviewed. Yahoo! Express submission is for commercial and non-commercial web sites. It guarantees a site review within 7 business days for a non-refundable US$299 ($600 for sites with adult content) submission fee. However, payment doesn’t guarantee inclusion in the directory. It only guarantees that Yahoo! will review your web site within 7 business days. If your web site is added to the Yahoo! Directory, you will be charged the non-refundable fee, every 12 months. Yahoo! provides instructions on how to suggest your site to their web directory. Open Directory Project Open Directory Project is the largest human-edited web directory with over 3.8 million reviewed sites. Its index is used by many of top search engines, including Google, AOL and Netscape. So it’s essential that you submit your web site to the index. The Open Directory Project has a page on how to add a site to the Open Directory. All submissions are free. LookSmart LookSmart integrates its directory on top web sites, such as Lycos, InfoSpace, Mamma.com, and CNET Search. The LookSmart Directory is a web directory with a difference. It only accepts commercial web sites, and charges advertisers on a cost-per-click basis (CPC). The first 5,000 clicks each month cost $0.15. Any more after that cost from $0.23 to $0.75 CPC.

If your site isn’t found in the search engines, it is probably because the robots couldn’t deal with it. It could be something as simple as not being able to find the site, or it may be more complicated issues involving the robot’s not being able to crawl the site or figure out what your pages are all about.Submitting your site to the major search engines: that will help with the “can’t find it” problem. Even having links pointing back to your site can be enough to attract the search engine robots. Google, for example, suggests that you may not have to submit your pages; they will find your site if you have a link pointing back to it from at least one other site on the web. If the robots can find your site but can’t make sense of it, then you may need to look at the content and technology used on your pages. Frames, Flash, dynamically generated pages, and invalid HTML source code can cause problems when the search engine robot tries to access your web pages. While some search engines are beginning to be able to index dynamically generated pages and Flash (e.g. Google and AllTheWeb), use of some of these technologies can hinder your ability to be indexed by the search engine robots. Text in images cannot be read by the search engine robots.Using ALT image text is an important way to help the robots “read” your images. Websites with extensive images rely heavily on ALT text to present their content.

How Do I Get The Most Out Of Indexing?

If you know what to “feed” the spidering robots you will help yourself with search engine ranking. Having a website full of good content is the major factor. Search engines exist to serve their visitors, not to rank your website. You need to be sure to present yourself in your site in the way that will be most useful to the search engine visitor. Each search engine has its own idea of what is important in a page, but they all value text highly. Making sure that the text on your pages includes your most important keyword phrases will help the search engine evaluate the content of those pages. Making sure that you have good title and meta tags will further assist the search engines in understanding what your page is about. If the text on the page is about widgets, the title is about widgets, and the meta tags are about widgets, the search engine will have a pretty good idea that you are all about widgets. When their visitors search for widgets, the search engines know to list your site in the results. A sitemap page is a very good way of giving the search engine robot every opportunity to reach your website pages. Since robots click through the links of your web pages, make sure that at least your most important pages are included in the sitemap; you may even want to include all your pages there, depending on the size of your site. Be sure to add a link to the sitemap page from each page on your site. Another important consideration is that of keeping all of your pages within a small number of “clicks” from your top page. Many robots will not follow links more than two or three levels deep, so if your “widgets” page can only be reached from your home page by following multiple links (e.g. home page >> about us page >> products page >> widgets page), the robot may not crawl deep enough to get to the widgets page. Testing Your Website For Search Engine Robot Accessibility To get an idea just what the search engine robot “sees” on your page, you can look at the Sim Spider tool. You may be surprised at how different your site looks to the robot. You can find this tool at http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/sim_spider.cgi You will see text and ALT image text show up in the results. If your entire website is built in Flash, you will see nothing at all because robots don’t understand Flash movies.

The Bottom Line

When it comes to search engine robots, think simply. Lots of good content and text, hyperlinks the robots can follow, optimization of your pages, topical links pointing back to your site and a sitemap will help insure the best results when the robots come visiting.

One interesting and little known form of SEO is leaving keyword-enriched comments on other people’s blogging sites. This is the secret to SEO success that many bloggers use to attract them to their bummarketing links or to their website selling products. In fact leaving comments on other people’s blogs that are relevant to your own can double and even triple the visitors to your own site. Your first task is to do a Technorati search by posting an article and then searching for your article to see whom else might be blogging on it. This is one way of finding blogs you can exchange links with. Yet another way is to do a Google search to try and pick the right blog. One key to picking good blogs to comment on is to pick ones that have high quality content and keywords that are similar to your own but don’t have many other comments on them. If you choose a blogger that is deluged with comments he or she may not bother to backline to you as you are at the end of the caboose. One way to get a blogger to pay attention to you is to ask a provocative yet relevant question of the material he or she is posting. This not only attracts people to the link to your blog it also will get the attention of the owner of the blogger site who may even choose to engage in a long exchange of comments with your. This is great for both of you as it is organic SEO full of the terms and phrases that people naturally search for and the search engines will love to pick up the naturally refreshed content. This is the best kind of SEO because a) you don’t have to pay for it and b) it is great word of mouth that often reinforces your credibility as an expert.