PROMOTIONAL ARTICLES AND INFORMATION
When the HTML language was first created, it was recognized that new tags would later be needed for specialized purposes. Since there wasn't any way to anticipate every possible need, the META tag was created as a sort of "catch-all." These tags allow Webmasters to issue an unlimited variety of commands, or to provide information to a browser, search engine, or automated program (i.e., robot). The tags are ignored by default unless the browser or search engine specifically recognizes them. Meta tags are contained in the HEAD section near the top of the page. They're not displayed to the end user unless you view the source code of the page. The two most common meta tags, and the ones we are most concerned about in this article are keyword and description tags. The meta keyword tag is designed to tell the search engine what keywords are important to your page, and thereby how people should be able to find you when they search. It should look something like the following: <META name="keywords" content="my keywords should be listed here"> Although you can list as many keywords as you like, most search engines will not read more than about 1000 characters. Include your most important keywords at the start of the tag. The meta description tag is primarily used for telling the search engine what description you want associated to the page in the search engine's results. It should look something like this: <META name="description" content="A short description of my Web site goes here."> It's essential that you create a compelling description for your page to entice people to click through from the search results. Each engine that supports the meta description tag will truncate it down to 150 to 400 characters depending on the engine. Therefore, include the best portion of your description in the first 150 characters, but go ahead and add additional sentences to fill it out to about 400 characters. It doesn't matter what order you place the tags in the HEAD area, although it's recommended that you include the TITLE tag first on the page, before listing any other tags. Unfortunately, the majority of the major search engines do not recognize the meta keyword tag at all. A larger number do recognize the meta description tag for the purpose of creating a summary for the page. The prevailing philosophy is that search engines prefer to index text that is clearly VISIBLE to the user, although exceptions are certainly made. The engines in general consider invisible text, such as that found in meta tags, as "untrustworthy" since they can be easily abused by an unethical Webmaster. For example, someone could list out many keywords that do not apply to their page's content, or they could repeat a keyword many times in hopes of boosting their rankings. Of the engines that do support meta tags, none are thought to give extra "relevance" to words appearing in meta tags versus elsewhere on the page. In fact, most engines give words in these tags less weight than if they had appeared elsewhere on the page such as in the body area or the page title. You might then conclude that meta tags are useless? Well, not quite. You definitely want to include a meta description tag on every page to avoid the search engine making up its own description from random excerpts on the page. In regard to the meta keyword tag, many experts believe that including a keyword in BOTH your meta tags and in other areas of your page CAN help improve your rankings. For example, let's say your keyword was "Star Wars collectibles" and it appeared in the body text that is visible to the user. If the keyword were also included in your meta keyword tag, then that would reinforce to the search engine that "Star Wars collectibles" was an important theme on this page. Although no extra relevancy boost is given for including the keyword solely in the meta tag, some engines may look to the meta tag as a way to reinforce their belief that a page is relevant if all the other more important factors "check out" too. In any case, including the tags are unlikely to hurt your rankings if you follow a few simple rules. Be careful not to repeat the same keyword more than two or three times in the tag. Never repeat the same word twice in a row or you may trigger a search engine's "spam filter." Lastly, never include keywords that do not apply to the content of that page. A technical discussion of meta data:
HTML Tutorials:
Meta Magician software to help you count meta tag letters & words, and manage all your tags:
WebPosition Gold's Page Critic, which offers additional advice regarding optimizing meta tags and the rest of your page:
At the end of September 2001 Yahoo made some sweeping changes to their service. Something that they haven't done in years. Since Yahoo receives more traffic than any other search engine or directory on the Web, you must pay careful attention to changes at this service. At first glance, you may notice that Yahoo's new search results looks much more like other crawler-based services such as Google. Rather than displaying, in some cases, huge lists of categories at the top of the search results, Yahoo now limits these matching categories to five or less. In addition, they display new, shorter names for the categories that are easier to read. Appropriate categories are also displayed underneath each search match. Google has been doing this for quite some time. In my opinion, the new format is a much-needed improvement for the end-user. For better or for worse, the ranking system has changed significantly. Therefore, some people are going to see increases in traffic from this change, and some will see losses. If you're one that has taken a drop in traffic or rankings, then it's critical you understand how the new Yahoo works. From a Web marketer's perspective, it's now easier for prospects to find your Web site in the Web site or Web page matches. The user no longer has to wade through as many as three or more pages of category when searching on popular keywords. What this means is that fewer people will be finding Web sites on Yahoo by clicking on a category. Web sites in Yahoo categories have traditionally been ranked alphabetically. Sponsored and "popular" sites have been placed in special sections at the top of some of these categories as they still are today. However, in the past, having a company name that ranked alphabetically high was a huge advantage because so many people found sites by browsing alphabetically listed categories. Now, I predict, we will see a greater percentage of people will be finding sites by clicking on a Web site listing directly from the initial search results. Does this mean that having an alphabetically favorable company name is no longer an advantage? Certainly not. However, if you have been strapped to a company name that was not alphabetically favorable, this new format can work to your advantage. Areas that Yahoo Considers:
So how does Yahoo's new ranking algorithm work? Essentially, Yahoo looks for the occurrence of the keyword(s) being searched in three areas. These areas consist of the following: 1. Yahoo Category - If the keyword appears in the category in which your listing appears, then you will receive a significant boost in ranking. Therefore, if you have a choice of being in a couple different categories, pick the one that includes the best keywords in its name. Be sure to conduct searches on your keywords prior to submitting to Yahoo. This will help you to determine the ideal category to suggest to the Yahoo editors. 2. Title of the Web site - This is generally the company name. You'll see it as the hyperlink portion of the listing. When you submit to Yahoo, you'll still want to use an alphabetically favorable company name whenever possible. As before, the name will need to match the company name used when you registered the domain. You should also include the name in the Web site title and in your contact page. If you're inconsistent, Yahoo will reject your submission or change the title to what they feel better represents your company name. Some Web sites use their domain name as their official company name. Yahoo will accept that too, but you must be consistent. 3. Web Site Description - Always include your best keywords in the description of the site that you submit to Yahoo. 4. Web Site Domain - You'll improve your rankings by including keywords in your domain name. In the case of Yahoo, you do NOT have to have each keyword separated by dashes, although that won't hurt. For example, if your domain was carbuyingtips.com and someone searched for the word "car," Yahoo would still count it as a match. Factors that Influence Yahoo Rankings:
When using keywords in the three areas above, Yahoo will consider four factors in regard to how many "points" it will give to a listing with the keyword appearing in one or more of the three areas. 1. Prominence - Yahoo places significant emphasis on WHERE the keyword appears in each of the areas. Therefore, if the keyword appears at the start of a title, description, or domain, it will be given more credibility than if the keyword appeared in the middle or end of the area. 2. Frequency - The number of times the keyword appears in each area is important. Generally, Yahoo editors are not going to allow you to repeat your keyword more than once in any area. The only time they might allow it is if it does not make the description look awkward. Your best bet in regard to frequency is to make sure your best keyword appears in as many of the three areas as possible. 3. Weight - It is suspected that Yahoo divides the number of keywords in the description (and possibly other areas) by the total number of words to compute a keyword weight. Therefore, if your keywords occupy a higher percentage of the total description, then that keyword will have more influence. Therefore, one strategy might be to minimize the number of total words in your description. However, this is generally not a viable strategy with Yahoo since it would limit the number of different keywords you can cover and your ability to write something that persuades people to click. 4. Proximity - When searching on a keyword phrase, the closer together the words in the search phrase are to each other in your description or elsewhere, the better you'll score. Both words, or at least a derivative of each word, needs to exist in the listing. For example, you can search for European cars and still get a match on a listing containing European and the word "car" in the singular form. However, if the user searches for "European cars" (plural) using quotes around the phrase, Yahoo will not match on "European car" (singular) since the user requested an exact match.
I've long been an advocate for creating high quality, search engine friendly pages. The idea that pages designed to rank well on a search engine must be ugly or deficient in content has no merit. The quality of a page and the uniqueness and value of its content rests completely in the hands of each Webmaster. It doesn't matter if you use a tool to help optimize your site or if you do it all by hand. Ultimately, you must create pages that will impress those visiting your Web site. Unfortunately, those Web marketers who churn out dozens of low-quality, cookie-cutter pages can give all search engine marketers a bad reputation. That's why you often hear the term doorway page and spam in the same sentence. Doorway pages should be nothing more than a page designed to provide valuable, highly relevant content to a search query. It should do this while conforming to the rules of the search engine so that the page will achieve one or more high rankings. The reasons for creating top quality pages are many. First, it does you no good to gain a top 10 ranking and then serve up a page that is completely devoid in value. Why bring a prospect to your Web site if you're going to do a poor job of selling them on your product? They'll quickly hit their browser's back button and move onto the next Web site. Secondly, all the major search engines claim to favor pages with high-quality content. They claim that to rank well on their engine that you simply need to create relevant, high quality pages. Unfortunately, it's a little more complicated than that, however, improving your site's content and design can do nothing but help your rankings and your sales. This assumes that while you're creating these pages that you take a few minutes to also mimic the key elements of top ranking pages. That's what the WebPosition Page Critic will help you do. In addition, it will try to warn you before you accidentally trigger any spam filters or do something that would reduce your rankings. With this in mind, I'd like to offer you some tips and resources you can put to use today to make your Web site the best it can be. There are many pitfalls to Web site design that you'll want to avoid. In addition, there are many simple steps you can take to dramatically increase the number of visitors who convert to paying customers. Getting visitors to your Web site is only half the battle. If you don't convert enough of them to paying customers once they arrive, you'll soon find yourself among the growing number of "dot com bombs." I founded FirstPlace Software ten years ago and since then we've experienced exponential growth. In fact, Deloitte & Touche ranks us among the nation’s fastest growing technology companies. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that I'm often asked what my secret is. There are many factors that go into creating a successful business. However, one of the most important factors to success comes from your willingness to learn. Read all you can about subjects that will help your business rise above the crowd and win in the world of e-commerce, sales, marketing, and customer service. You'd be surprised how much difference a few hours of research can make upon your bottom-line. First, learn how to write effective marketing copy before you even start building that Web site. A Web-based business lives and dies by its ability to convey its message effectively and persuasively to its visitors! Fancy graphics and Java scripts might help, but what your Web site says and how it says it will be the determining factor. If you simply have no talent for writing and do not have the time or willingness to learn, then at least invest the money and hire someone who does. Or, if you have no money to invest, find a friend who's a skilled writer whose willing to lend you a hand. There are entire books on writing effectively. If you have the time, order some from Amazon.com or from your local bookstore and study them. If you're time is limited like many of us, at least invest a few minutes reading articles like this one and committing their advice to memory: "Seven Keys To Writing Powerful Marketing Copy" by Scott T. Smith http://linz1.net/prservice3.html Once you write anything, print it out, re-read it and compare it to the advice in the above article. Are you meeting those objectives as effectively as possible? If not, re-write and revise until you do meet those goals. Although the "Seven Keys to Writing" is a good start, you really need to devote at least a couple hours to other resources such as the many great articles found at: Clickz.com: "Writing Online" http://clickz.com/column/wo.html Most importantly, find someone who can proof read your work and give you a second, unbiased opinion. In fact, seek out as many opinions as you can. I have six to eight people who proofread my newsletters before they go out. Every one of them finds errors or room for improvement, making the final product even better. You will never grow as a writer unless you solicit the honest feedback of others who are not afraid to be critical of your work. After you've honed your writing skills, integrate that new marketing copy into a Web site designed to both sell and solve a problem. Most people can look at a Web site and within 5 to 10 seconds come away with an impression of whether it’s clean, professional and worth their time, or whether it looks like it's run by a 14 year old kid out of his mother's basement. Many elements go into designing a great Web site and a number of today's top companies miss the boat on this one. You don't have to know VB scripting or be an HTML guru to create an effective Web site. You only have to know what makes a Web site user-friendly, accessible, and ultimately, one that "sells." The following article includes 28 tips from the pros for designing drop-dead layouts, finding the right colors, speeding page load times, and more. Your Web site may look great to your eye, but if you're not pulling the sales you want, how does it really look to the average Joe? "Great Tips from CNET Designers" http://www.builder.com/Graphics/CTips/index.html Marketing can be defined simply as perception. You may have a great product and the most in-depth information on your topic bar-none, but if the user perceives differently, then you're wasting your time. They'll move onto someone else's site that does a better job solving their problem, at least as they perceive it. If you have questions about HTML, using FrontPage, creating effective site navigation, or any of dozens of other Web site building topics, see CNET's Web site builder's resource page at: http://builder.cnet.com/webbuilding/0-3881.html?tag=st.bl.3880.dir.3881 Whether you already have a Web site designed or are looking to create a new one, choose your overall design carefully. A poor design will turn off a visitor before they even have a chance to read your marketing copy. Learn the pros and cons of various design approaches before choosing one that works best for your Web site: Clickz.com: "Site Design" http://clickz.com/column/sd.html Lastly, be sure your end product not only passes the visitor usability test, but passes with flying colors. If your Web site is a pleasure to use, your visitors will respond in kind by purchasing far more of your products and services. If it forces them to stop and wonder where to click next, you'll often see them backpedaling to their favorite search engine before they give your site a real chance. Therefore, take the time to read this article to help you achieve this goal: "ZD NET--Users First: Web Usability" http://www.zdnet.com/devhead/stories/articles/0,4413,2137433,00.html Once you've created first-class content to be proud of, make sure it's search engine friendly. Run it through the WebPosition Gold Page Critic to find out exactly how to make your page more appealing to each of the major search engines: http://www.webposition.com/product.htm What's the point of having the best Web site in the world if nobody can find you? Don't succumb to the rhetoric that you can't obtain top rankings while creating great content. The two are not mutually exclusive. Many people do it everyday, and there's no reason you can't as well. The key, as I'm so fond of saying, is knowledge. You don't have to have a Masters degree in marketing to do it. I have a degree in computer science but I've taught myself the ins and outs of Web marketing without any formal training. Invest a little time each day to learning the skills you need to succeed. You'd be surprised how few people take that extra step that truly will make all the difference in your career. Unfortunately, this is an all too common question. If it makes you feel any better, you're not the only one frustrated about the length of time it takes to be indexed, or the many pitfalls involved. It often takes anywhere from two days to as much as six months to be listed on a search engine. For example, last month Excite finally updated its index for the first time since last August! Luckily, Excite is the most extreme case lately, but waiting several weeks to a month can also be extremely frustrating. The WebPosition Submitter report will give you current time estimates for each engine so you'll know what to expect. However, an engine at any time could choose to delay their indexing beyond the "norm" for maintenance or other reasons. On the flip side, you could get lucky and submit just a couple days before an engine does a complete refresh of their database. Therefore, submission times can never be an exact science since we're all ultimately at the mercy of the engine. If you've submitted your site and have waited the estimated time to be indexed and there's still no listing, what do you do now? Here are 16 tips that should help you solve this problem: 1. First, be sure you're not already indexed but just don't know it. Unfortunately, none of the major engines are kind enough to e-mail or notify you as to if and when you've been indexed. The method to determine if a page or domain has been indexed varies from one engine to another, and in many cases, it's difficult to tell for sure. Never assume that you're not indexed just because you searched for a bunch of keywords and you never came up in the first few pages of results. You could be in there but buried near the bottom. In addition, it's not very practical to check the status of a number of pages on each major engine each week. Fortunately, WebPosition has a URL verification feature in the Reporter that makes this process much easier. Each time you run a mission, it will report which URLs exist and do not exist in each engine. If you're using WebPosition and are not finding your URLs after submitting, be sure to see this page for common pitfalls to watch out for: http://www.webposition.com/urlnotfoundhelp.htm 2. Make sure you have uploaded the pages to your site before submitting them. This one seems obvious, but submitting a page that does not exist or submitting with a subtle typo in the URL is a goof we might all make at one time or another. If you're using WebPosition's Submitter, there's a checkbox on tab 2 that forces WebPosition to verify that all your URLs are valid before submitting them. 3. If you have information inside frames, that can cause problems with submissions. It's best if you can create non-framed versions of your pages. You should then submit the non-frames versions of your pages which can of course point to your framed Web site. Alternatively, you can enter your relevant text within the NOFRAMES area of a framed page which most search engine spiders will read. 4. Search engine spiders cannot index sites that require any kind of registration or password. A spider cannot fill out a form of any kind. The same rule applies regarding indexing of content from a searchable database, because the spider cannot fill out a form to query that database. The solution is to create static pages that the engines will be able to find. 5. Dynamic pages often block spiders. In fact, any URL containing special symbols like a question mark (?) or an ampersand (&) will be ignored by many engines. 6. Most engines cannot index text that is embedded in graphics. Text that appears in multimedia files (audio and video) cannot be indexed by most engines. Information that is generated by Java applets or in XML coding cannot be indexed by most engines. 7. If your site has a slow connection or the pages are very complex and take a long time to load, it might time out before the spider can index all the text. For the benefit of your visitors and the search engines, limit your page size to less than 60K. In fact, most Webmasters recommend that your page size plus the size of all your graphics should not exceed 50K-70K. If it does, many people on dial up connections will leave before the page fully loads. 8. If you submit just your home page, don't expect a search engine to travel more than one or two links away from the home page or the page that you submitted. Over time they may venture deeper into your site, but don't count on it. You'll often need to submit pages individually that appear further down into your site or have no link from the home page. 9. If your Web site fails to respond when the search engine spider pays a visit, you will not be indexed. Even worse, if you are indexed and they pay a visit when your site is down, you'll often be removed from their database! Therefore, it pays to have a reliable hosting service that is up 99.5% of the time. However, at some point a spider is going to hit that other 0.5% and end up yanking your pages by mistake. Therefore, it pays to keep a close eye on your listings. 10. If you have ever used any questionable techniques that might be considered an overt attempt at spamming (i.e., excessive repetition of keywords, same color text as background, or other things that the WebPosition Page Critic warns you about), an engine may ignore or reject your submissions. If you're having trouble getting indexed in the expected amount of time, make sure your site is spam-free. 11. If your site contains redirects or meta refresh tags these things can sometimes cause the engines to have trouble indexing your site. Generally they will index the page that it is redirecting TO, but if it thinks you are trying to "trick" the engine by using "cloaking" or IP redirection technology, there's a chance that it may not index the site at all. 12. If you're submitting to a directory site like Yahoo, Open Directory, NBCi, Looksmart, or others, then a human being will review your site. They must decide the site is of sufficient "quality" before they will list it. I recommend you read the submission guide on the directory tab of the WebPosition Submitter. It contains tips to improve your chances of obtaining a good listing on these directories. 13. A number of engines no longer index pages residing on many common free web hosting services. The common complaint from the engines is that they get too many "junk" or low-quality submissions from free web site domains. Therefore, they often choose not to index anyone from those domains or they limit submissions from them. It's always best to buy your own domain name (very important) and place it on a respected, paid hosting service to avoid being discriminated against. 14. Some engines have been known to drop pages that cannot be traveled to from the home page. HotBot has been rumored to do this. You may want to consider submitting your home page that links either directly or indirectly to your doorway pages. 15. Make sure you're submitting within the recommended limits. Some engines do not like more than a certain number of submissions per day for the same domain. If you exceed the limit, you may find that all your submissions are ignored. Fortunately, WebPosition's submitter will warn you regarding current limits and recommend you stay within them. Some submission consultants feel it is dangerous to submit more than ONE page a day to a engine for a given Web site. For those who wish to be ultra-conservative in their approach, the WebPosition Submitter includes a checkbox to limit submissions to one URL per day per engine. 16. Last but not least, sometimes the engines just lose submissions at random through technical errors and bugs. Therefore, some people like to resubmit once or twice a month for good merit in case they do lose a submission. Certainly if you've followed all the "rules" and are still not listed, re-submit! Sometimes a little persistence is all that's needed. If any of the above scenarios apply to your submission, you should make the necessary adjustments and re-submit. If that still does not work, you should consider e-mailing or calling the search engine and asking them politely why you have not been indexed yet. Sometimes they will reply back with "Sorry, there was a problem with our system and I've now made sure you'll be indexed within the next couple days." Or, sometimes they'll tell you why you were not indexed. In other cases, they will ignore your e-mail and you'll have to keep e-mailing or calling them until they respond. Still, it's definitely worth the effort to get your site listed with the major engines assuming you also take the time to optimize your pages so you'll achieve top rankings. REPRINT PERMISSION: The above articles, or portions of them, have been reprinted with permission from the MarketPosition Newsletter and FirstPlace Software, Inc. and is copyright 1997-2001. FirstPlace produces WebPosition Gold, the award-winning software product to increase traffic to your Web site by tracking and improving your search engine rankings. You may download a FREE trial copy of WebPosition Gold from http://www.webposition.com
What are Meta Tags And How Are They Best Used?
Will Meta Tags Improve My Rankings?
Meta Tag Resources
http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/head/meta.html
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/primers/primer_1.html
http://www.webposition.com/metamagician.htm
https://www.webposition.com/wpg-easyorder.htmYahoo Dramatically Changes Their Format.
What to do Now?How to Create High Quality Content While Improving Your Rankings
Why Can't I Get Indexed by the Search Engines?
COMPANY PROFILE
CONTACT INFORMATION
SERVICES AND PRICES
DESIGN PORTFOLIO
WEB PROJECT QUESTIONNAIRE
E-COMMERCE SOLUTIONS
GENERAL INFORMATION