Rapid Web Site - Enhancing Your Search Engine Placement

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What Are Meta Tags?

Meta Tags are information inserted into a HTML document. Meta tags are not displayed when the page is displayed by a browser, they are utilized for conveying information to the browser, or more importantly, to a search engine. This tutorial concentrates on the two Meta Tags used by search engine robots when categorizing and determining the relevance of your web page. The careful use of Meta tags can help determine if your listing is highly placed or buried on a results page virtually no one will ever see.

Meta Tags and Rapid Web Site

This tutorial concentrates on the two most important Meta Tags: The Key Words and the Description Meta tags. These tags are so important, the Rapid Web Site (RWS) system has an administrative function just so you can easily add these two tags to all your RWS pages.

Getting Started

When starting your website it is important to determine how you want to be found by people who do not know about your product, service, or interests. To illustrate, if you have a restaurant named “A Taste of Italy”, it is likely there are few people in the pizza-loving segment of the local population knowing the name of your business. Those who do know your name probably already know about your Web site so we are concentrating on those people who do not know your restaurant by name.

Put yourself in the shoes of a visitor to your area who has a burning desire for a great pizza. They go to their Web browser and type in the URL of their favorite search engine. What do they enter in the search box? It’s a big help to think how someone would find you in the yellow pages. Everyone is influenced, even if they are not aware of it, by seeking information using a model yielding positive results in the past.

Many people would probable go to Yellow Page’s restaurants section and then to the Italian sub category. When they find your ad they would look to see if you have pizza. So we now have three key words for the Keyword Meta tag, restaurant, pizza, and Italian. This is very important from a search engine perspective. Not only does search engines use the Key Words when placing your website appropriately within their listings, they are also used to help determine your relative position to other restaurants selling pizza.

Your key word grouping should also include geographic information. Let’s continue the Yellow Page example. The hungry pizza gourmet looks in a specific book, a city book if it’s a large community or a county book if it’s a smaller community. Don’t overload your key word count; you will shoot yourself in the foot. Don’t list every community in your county. How far will people travel to get to your restaurant, if they have never been there before?

How many key words should I use?

When choosing your key words try to limit them to no more than five, the fewer the better. Once you have selected your key words, use them as often as possible in your home page, without overuse. More on this in the section “Additional Search Engine Placement Considerations.”

The Description Meta Tag

The Description Meta tag describes who you are. Limit your description to about 200 characters or 20 words. The results of searches frequently use your description as the title of a listing. Your description can determine if someone clicks on the link to your site or the link to a competitor. Try using your Key Words in your Description. Be very specific when developing your Description. Do not use words or phrases like “greatest” or “the world’s best.” Search engines really don’t like these phrases. To use our previous example, phrase your description: “A Taste of Italy, Serving Hot Oven Pizza and Sandwiches to Atlantic City, New Jersey Since 1926.”

How does this work with the Rapid Website System?

In the administrative Menu there is a section for including Meta Tags in your website. To include your Meta Tags, click on the, “User Defined Header, Footer, Meta Tags, JavaScript, and Cascading Style Sheet” link. In this part of the Administrative Section, you can include your Meta Tag Key Words and your Meta Tag Description.

List your Key Words or phrases in the text entry box separated by commas. Do not capitalize all of them, and try not to repeat any key words. In the Description area, include your company description.

As an example, the entry in your Meta Tag Keywords might be:

restaurant, pizza, Italian, Atlantic City, New Jersey, NJ

Your Meta Tag Description might be:

A Taste of Italy, Serving Hot Oven Pizza and Sandwiches to Atlantic City, New Jersey Since 1926

Once you have inserted them into the text boxes, check the “Yes” button after the phrase “Activate the Keyword Meta Tag code below?” and also click the “Yes” button after the phase, “Activate the Description Meta Tag code below?” These are situated just above the text entry areas on each of the sections.

Once you have included these items on the page and activated them by selecting “Yes” on both sections, go to the bottom of the page and select, “Submit.” From that point forward Rapid Website System automatically inserts the Meta Tag information, in the proper format, on every page on your site. These do not show up on the pages visibly, but reside in the background of the page, or the HTML code that makes up your page. You can see them by bringing up a page from your site in a browser window. Click on the “View” menu and select “View Source.” The actual HTML code sent by the server to your browser is displayed.

Additional Search Engine Placement Considerations

There are books dedicated to search engine placement. Indeed, a one-day seminar on search engines costs over a thousand dollars. Search engine placement is by no means an exact science. Many consider successful placement black magic. Compounding the problem are differences in placement criterion between search engines. It is not unusual for a top-five listing in one search not to appear in the top 100 on another engine.

You can help your search engine placement with the diligent use of your key words in your page. Search engines perform “Key Word Density Analysis.” In short, it looks at the ration of key words to the total number of words on the page. The more often your key words are used, the higher a search engine will place you. In addition many search engines use “importance” analysis. A key word used in the page title is much more important than the same key word used in the body of your text. The importance analysis varies by search engine, but a good guide as to relative importance is:

Meta Tags
Title of your page
Paragraph headers
Links on the page
In the text as often as possible

If the restaurant, A Taste of Italy, had a recipe page using a link of "Pizza Recipes" or "Italian Recipes" rather than just Recipes would produce better search engine results. If Atlantic City is one of your key words and in your Meta Tag description, don’t have a paragraph heading “AC Loves Our Pizza” use "Atlantic City Loves Our Pizza."

Summary

Determining your target market is extremely important in the design of your Web site, not just for the creation of keywords. For most websites this is fairly easy, but it does take some thought. Most Web sites are (or should be) designed to attract a very specific target market. Targeting leads to defining a Web site with only a few specific key words.

If you want your site ranked highly by search engines develop the skill to foster that lofty goal and you will be rewarded with more visitors to your Web site. Selecting your key words is a critical first step.

Conclusion

Search engine placement is an art form. Don’t expect to optimize your placement on the first try. Select your search engine of choice and study the commonality between highly placed listings. Follow the link to highly places pages and look at the HTML code to see the Meta Tags used. Once the page is displayed, click on your browser's “View” menu and then click on “Display Source.” Concentrate on key word density. Keep the total words on your home page to the minimum possible, to convey your message. Use additional pages to give detailed information.

If you come up with any ideas not covered here, we would enjoy hearing about them.

Reference:
Meta Tag Tutorial at Search Engine Watch