META Description

Syntax: < META name="Description" content="Web page description">

This is a Meta tag that provides a brief description of a Web page. It is important the description clearly descibes the purpose of the page. The importance of the Description tag as an element of the ranking algorithm has decreased significantly over years, but there are still search engines that support this tag. They log descriptions of the indexed pages and often display them with the Title in their results.

The length of a displayed description varies per search engine. Therefore you should place the most important keywords at the beginning of the first sentence -- this will guarantee that both users and search engines will see the most important information about your site.

META Keywords

Syntax: < META name="Keywords" content="keyword1, keyword2, keyword3">

This is Meta tag that lists the words or phrases about the contents of the Web page. This tag provides some additional text for crawler-based search engines. However because of frequent attempts to abuse their system, most search engines ignore this tag. Please note that none of the major crawler-based search engines except Inktomi provide support for the Keywords Meta tag.

Similar to the description tag, there is a limit in the number of captured characters in Keywords meta tag. Ensure you've chosen keywords that are relevant to the content of your site. Avoid repetitions as search engines can penalize your rankings. Move the most important keywords to the beginning to increase their prominence.

META Refresh

Syntax: < META http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url= ">http://newURL.com/">

This HTML META tag also belongs in the Head tag of your HTML page.

The META Refresh tag is often used as a way to redirect the viewer to another Web page or refresh the content of the viewed page after a specified number of seconds. The META Refresh tag is also sometimes used as a doorway page optimized for a certain search engine, which is accessed first by users, who then are redirected to the main Web site. Some search engines discourage the use of this META tag, because it is an opportunity for webmasters to spam search engines with similar pages that all lead to the same page. In addition, this also clutters the search engines databases with irrelevant and multiple versions of the same data. Try to avoid doorways and redirects altogether in your Web building.

META Robots

Syntax: < META name="Robots" content="INDEX,FOLLOW">

The robots instructions are normally placed in a robots.txt file that is uploaded to the root directory of a domain. However, if a webmaster does not have access to /robots.txt, then instructions can be placed in the Robots META tag. This tag tells the search engine robots whether a page should be indexed and included in the search engine database and its links followed.

The content of the robots meta tag is a comma separated list that may contain the following commands:

ALL also INDEX,FOLLOW -- there are no restrictions on indexing the page or following links; NONE also NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW -- robots must ignore the page; a combination of INDEX, FOLLOW, NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW -- if you want a search engine robot just to index a page but not to follow links, you should specify 'INDEX,NOFOLLOW', if you want it to follow links without indexing the page, you should instruct robots as 'NOINDEX,FOLLOW'.

The purpose of the check done by Web CEO is to ensure there are no commands that might prevent search engine robots from indexing a page and following links. For that reason, 'ALL' or 'INDEX, FOLLOW' are commands expected in this tag.

area

The body tag indentifies the beginning of the main section of your Web page, the main content area. The whole of the Web page is designed between the opening and closing body tag. (...) including all images, links, text, headings, paragraphs, and forms.

The recommendations on how to use keywords in the BODY tag are the same as in other important areas. Your primary keywords should be placed at the top of your body tag (first 25 words) and as close to the beginning of a sentence as possible. Do not forget to use them again in each paragraph. Keywords should not be repeated one after another. For search engines that check keyword presence at the bottom of the body tag, you should use your most important keywords within the last 25 words from the closing body tag.

Visible text

The content of the Body tag includes both visible and invisible text. The term 'Visible text' refers to the portion that is displayed by the browser. The visible text analyzed by Web CEO is all within the Body tag but exclude HTML Comments (invisible) and ALT Tags (partially visible).

Extra emphasis by search engines is put on keywords when you underline them or make them bold, thus helping higher rankings for these keywords.

First heading on the page (H1-H6)

Syntax: Keyword in the Heading, < H3>Keyword in the Heading, etc.

It is important the keyword is present in the very first heading tag on the page regardless of its type. If the keyword is also used as a first word, you will raise its prominence.

All headings

There are standard rules for the structure of HTML pages. They are written in a document-like fashion. In a document, you start with the title, then a major heading that usually describes the main purpose of the section. Subheadings highlight the key points of each subsection. Many search engines rank the words found in headings higher than the words found in the text of the document. Some search engines incorporate keywords by looking at all the heading tags on a page.

Links

Syntax: keyword

Anchor tags on the page can also have keyword-rich text as anchor names. This text can be important to some search engines and therefore also for the rankings of the destination pages. Create anchored links with keywords in them to link pages of your Web site.

Text in links including ALTs

Syntax: )

Images like buttons, banners, etc. may include Alt attributes as a text comment describing the graphic image. If this image has been used as a hyperlink, the Alt attribute is interpreted as a link text by some search engines, and the destination page will have a significant boost in rankings for the keyword in the Alt attribute. Use graphic links with keyword-rich Alts to link pages of your Web site.

ALT image attributes

Syntax:

Optimization of Alt image attributes gives you another opportunity to use keywords. It is advantageous if the page is designed with large graphics and very little text. Include the target keyword in at least the first three Alt attributes.

Comments

Syntax:

This tag lets webmasters write notes about the page code, which is only for their guidance and is invisible to the browser. Most search engines do not read the content of this tag, so Comments optimization will not be as helpful as Title optimization. The Comment tags should be populated with keywords only if the design of the Web page does not allow more efficient and search engine-friendly methods.

Link popularity

This is the number of links from other Web site pages to your page that search engines are aware of.

Each search engine only lists links embedded on the sites that are preindexed by that particular search engine. So, the presence of certain links in Google's index will not guarantee that Inktomi has also indexed the same sites. Therefore the number of links shown will be different from engine to engine.

In general, the more links that point to your page, the better your page will rank.

However, a large number of links is not the deciding factor that helps your site get to the top of the results pages -- the quality of those links is of greater importance. If a link to your site is placed on a page having very little importance that is this page itself is linked to only a few other pages or none, this kind of link will not improve a page's popularity. The links to your pages should be subject-relevant because theme-based search engines will check the parity of content between referring and referred pages. The closer they are, the more relevant your site page is to the searcher's query for your keyword. Avoid reciprocal linking with sites that have a low weight, or a questionable reputation or are different from yours in subject matter. As a part of their anti-spam measures, search engines can penalize your site's rankings for ignoring these pitfalls.

Theme

For spam-free and relevant results, search engines start evaluating sites as one page to find the main theme covering all pages of the site. Most major search engines have become theme-based.

Search engines extract and analyze words on all pages of a Web site to discover its theme. The more keywords found on your Web site that relate to the user's query, the more points you get for the theme. Therefore, if your Web business includes many products or services, try to find the theme that covers them all.

To analyze the theme of your site, the program follows links on the analyzed page and sees if there are keywords in the Body, titles, and descriptions of the linked pages.

Open Directory Project listing (dmoz.org)

The ODP (also known as DMOZ) is the largest human-edited directory on the Web. Many major search engines use the ODP data to provide their directory results. This works because sites put forward for inclusion in the ODP are reviewed by real people who care about the quality of their directory.

It is still a good for a Web site to be present in the ODP. For new sites, it is an excellent starting point, because Google regularly spiders the ODP to update its own directory based on the ODP listings, and if your site is included, you'll get a link that Google believes important enough to start off crawling your site.

As well as the weight of a link from the ODP, it would be even better if the site were listed in the most topic-specific category to make the link not only important, but also content-relevant.

Yahoo! Directory listing

This is similar to the ODP -- Google relationship. The Yahoo! directory is regularly crawled by the Yahoo! robots. A new site has a greater chance of being included faster in the Yahoo! search engine if there is a link to this site from the Yahoo! directory. If you get your site is listed within the Yahoo! category closest to your site theme, this particular link will help your site move up.

About the Author: http://www.geocities.com/searchengineoptimalisation/

Source: www.isnare.com