| Listed here you will find the five of the most | | | | Essentially the meta tags you should be using when |
| important points to remember when optimising your | | | | targeting the search engines are keywords, |
| site and individual pages for the search engines. | | | | description and robots. |
| If you optimise your pages by working through these | | | | Keywords should also contain keyphrases and list |
| points one by one you will see a significant rise in | | | | keywords/keyphrases relevant to the page they |
| your search engine rankings. | | | | appear in. There are two ways to list your keywords |
| 1: Buy the right Domain names! | | | | keyphrases. Either with commas separating them or |
| The best way to increase your rankings in the | | | | without. The benefit to not using commas is that the |
| SE's(Search Engines) and for the least amount of | | | | keywords side by side can also be read as |
| effort is to choose the right domain name for your | | | | keyphrases by the SE's. Where as a comma |
| site from the start. The SE's give a domain name the | | | | separates everything out. So not using commas |
| highest prominence and score when issuing a ranking. | | | | allows for some odd combinations to be picked up by |
| So it's a major priority to have your domain name | | | | the SE's.meta name="keywords" content=" best |
| contain keywords relevant to your site content. | | | | exercise equipment cheap home gym equipment |
| The other point to remember is that domain names | | | | health good exercise order online" |
| can have up to 67 characters in them including the | | | | That's just an example off the top of my head I |
| extension(.com, .net etc) now as opposed to the | | | | haven't researched the words as I normally would, |
| original 23. So you can load your domain name with a | | | | you should also have much more in there around |
| number of keywords to boost your ranking, just | | | | 20-30 words at least. Notice again I've started of |
| remember to use a hyphen to separate them out. | | | | with 'best exercise equipment' to echo and boost the |
| This also means that if a really great domain name | | | | use of that phrase elsewhere as discussed above. |
| has gone you can get something close and in fact | | | | The description is self explanatory again and it's a |
| better because you could simply add another | | | | good move to echo the title of the page and fill it |
| keyword. Eg say wasn't available, I could register | | | | out a little so -meta name="description" |
| best-exercise or | | | | content="best exercise equipment - best, cheap, |
| I have a number of clients using this technique very | | | | new and used exercise equipment reviewed and |
| successfully, and of course if you check out the | | | | available to order online" |
| address bar above this very site does the same | | | | The robots tag is very simple and is not strictly |
| thing. ;-) | | | | necessary but useful. What it does is tell the visiting |
| For the cheapest domain names online with the best | | | | SE spiders what to do when it comes to listing your |
| control panel online try I highly recommend these | | | | site. Spiders are the little programs that crawl the |
| guys I've used them for years now and register all | | | | web gathering info on websites for the SE's. You can |
| my own and my clients domains through them. | | | | also use something called a robots.txt file to further |
| 2: Choose the right Title for your page. | | | | control the spiders, but I won't go into that here |
| The title of your page is what visitors will see across | | | | since its not strictly necessary and the robots tag is |
| the top of their browsers when they visit your site. | | | | enough for our aims at the moment. |
| It's important that each of your site pages is titled | | | | Here's an example -meta name="robots" content |
| differently to distinguish them from each other and | | | | ="index, follow" |
| to tie in with the content of the page. | | | | With this we're telling the spider/robot to follow all |
| This is also the title of your listing when your site is | | | | the links when visiting this page. |
| returned in the results of a Search Engine. | | | | If you have a members area or an admin area on |
| This is probably the second most important thing to | | | | your site that you don't want listed in the SE's, or |
| get right after choosing your domain name. If your | | | | any other pages you want to keep to yourself then |
| domain name has good keywords then repeat these | | | | you can use this -meta name="robots" content |
| keywords in the title of your page, add a hyphen and | | | | ="index,no follow" |
| then add your keyword rich title for that page. So | | | | A well known and very useful tool for checking out |
| going back to the example above your title should | | | | what search words people are using on the SE's is |
| probably be along the lines of - | | | | Wordtracker. When you know what people are |
| Best Exercise Equipment - Best, Cheap, New and | | | | searching for you know what keywords and |
| Used Exercise Equipment. | | | | keyphrases you should be weaving into your website. |
| Notice how I get exercise equipment in there twice, | | | | This tool is used by all the online Marketing experts. |
| first as the name of the site and then as a | | | | Another tool is the Overture suggestion tool which |
| description of the page. The capitalising of the main | | | | will list the number of times a word or phrase has |
| words within the title will help your page stand out in | | | | been searched for on the Overture engine over the |
| the results a little. Don't be tempted capitalise all your | | | | previous month. A handy tool that will query |
| letters this looks cheap and some directory's will not | | | | Overture directly from your desktop and store all |
| list your page with a title in this state. | | | | results of your keyword searches is Good Keywords. |
| I've mentioned keywords a fare bit already and I | | | | For a more extensive list of keyword resources try |
| should probably say jump down to No5 for a better | | | | my keyword research page. |
| idea of what they are and how to use them. | | | | 5: Body text Keyword/Keyphrases and bold text. |
| 3: Use the H1 tag on the, on page, title/heading of | | | | This is very much where the focus is when it comes |
| your page. | | | | to keywords and keyphrases. Generally it makes |
| A H1 tag is the heading text tag in HTML. SE's give | | | | sense the more focused your body text is on what |
| this tag more relevancy as it's generally used for the | | | | your page is about the better you will get ranked. In |
| title of a page eg h1 best exercise equipment /h1. | | | | those terms everyone's a winner. You get better |
| That 's the actual on page title and not the browser | | | | listing and your content is more relevant in order to |
| title. | | | | achieve that. Does that make sense ? let me clarify. |
| If you try this out you'll find that it looks pretty ugly, | | | | Returning to our examples again our site is called |
| with lots of space around it and much to chunky for | | | | We've already used the phrase 'exercise equipment' |
| a nice looking site. | | | | in our domain name, page title, on page title and in |
| So here's a trick you can use to keep the H1 tag but | | | | our meta tags. |
| have the text appear as normal. *whisper use css | | | | If we now add this same phrase to the main text of |
| style sheets to shrink the text back to size. Check | | | | our page a number of times ideally near the top |
| the title of this page 'Web site optimisation Part1' | | | | within the first paragraph we'll boost our ranking in |
| that's a H1 tag that's been fixed. Big difference isn't | | | | the SE's yet again. |
| there. | | | | Note you should try to make the phrase fit the text |
| This is a little known but very useful secret. ;-) | | | | and not just cram it in there. It's also important not |
| Here's the code to do the trick, drop it into your css | | | | to over do it. As it is with the other techniques |
| document or place it 'style' tags at the head of your | | | | described in this article. You can get your site |
| code -h1 {font-size: 13px; margin: 0px;} | | | | dropped and even barred from the SE's if it's seen to |
| Its that simple, play around with the font-size until it's | | | | be 'spamming' them by abusing these techniques. So |
| in proportion to the rest of your page. | | | | tread carefully and try not to be tempted to over do |
| Remember it's the title of your page and should | | | | it. |
| stand out a little from the rest of the text. | | | | Back to the keywords/keyphrases, there's a further |
| 4: Meta tags are still useful. Choosing keywords. | | | | twist to this if we also make the body text 'exercise |
| Not as important as they once were due to abuse. | | | | equipment' bold we'll score again in the SE's since text |
| But still used by a number of well known search | | | | in bold is seen as being more important and again |
| engines, the new Yahoo search checks them as does | | | | more relevant. ;-) The side benefit is that it breaks |
| the MSN search. But Google gives them little | | | | up the text a little on the page too for our site |
| relevance. Which means it's still important to use | | | | visitors and makes the page a little more interesting |
| them to cover all your bases. | | | | and easier to read. |