Tuesday, June 12, 2007

11 Meta Tag Terms Every Webmaster Should Know...

Understanding Meta Tag Terms...

Title Tag
must be different for every page, create a keyword rich title relevant to the content of each page

Meta Keyword Tag must be different for every page, keyword must be relevant to the content of each page, each page is good for 2 or 3 keyword phrases only.

Meta Description Tag must be different for every page, use the first 50 words of first paragraph or header of each page

Page Header includes your site name in text, a keyword laced slogan and a recognizable logo, be consistent and make it the same on every page. Don't confuse your site visitors by making your web pages look different than your main page.

Body Header Tag top of each page, keyword rich, repeat the page title tag if possible. Do not use this to welcome your visitors, welcome is not a keyword. Do not use your company name unless it is descriptive of the product line. There is a big difference between "Welcome to Rudy's Product" website and "Anti Aging Skin Care Products For Younger Looking Skin" and watch the caps and bolding, don't shout at your visitors.

Body Content Text at minimum 100 words, keyword or phrase 3 times, beginning, middle and end. relevant to page title. Link to product and information pages within your website.

Graphic Alt and Title Tags use them, each search engine uses the alt or title tag as needed and ignores the tag it doesn't need.

Internal Links link each page to the next using the keyword of the next page in the link.

Content Links link products on content pages to the product pages DON'T OVER DO IT!

Navigation The menus were simplified. although drop downs and sliders are very nice, the menu bars make a great keyword link if formatted correctly. I recommend staying away from drop downs and sliders, as well as flash based and graphic menu systems. Give the spiders what they want, text. We did format the menu item hover over in the CSS (Cascading Style Sheet). I've seen this before where novices add multiple links in there menus that either go to a duplicate pages or the same page. One menu link per page. Your customers will find what they are looking for much easier. The site just left me confused when I first reviewed it. If you mention your products in the content of your page, link to the product page mentioned in the text.

Sitemap As for the sitemap, this CMS has programs that generate and update the sitemap on the fly. Get yourself a Google account and submit the sitemap. If the sitemap is properly formatted your site will be crawled and indexed within days. Recently the search engines announced that the sitemaps URL can be added anywhere to the Robots.TXT file in this format Sitemap: http://mywonderfulsite.com/allmypages.xml. This does simplify the process, but the as yet to be determined question is how will you know if the sitemap failed verification. The only way I know if the sitemap failed verification is to add the sitemap manually using the Google webmaster tools. Within a short time Google will report on the sitemaps validation. The sitemap will also give you a visual of how well organized your website is.

>> Website layout and navigation is key to the usability of your website.

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