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Step #2
Web Design
- Next Step -
Since the ultimate goal is for your site to be found,
it must be
easy to access and navigate. So have each page cater to different
keyword searches. Use the keywords that you expect surfers to
use to locate you in the site’s text. In most cases, the
document title has the most significant effect on the visibility
of a web page, and it is the first few words that are the most
significant of all; prefacing your title with the words
"Welcome to …" will square unfavourably for your
search placement aspirations. Think of that first screen as the
front page of a newspaper. Really important information goes on
the front page, and the most important goes at the top. For
all these reasons, it is important to provide thoughtful and
descriptive titles and text as well as to avoid vagueness. Make an
effort to be as concise as possible for this factors into how
your searches are managed – the more text you have the less
strong its effects will be. In addition, there is a technical
device known as meta-tags. These provide information about the
document behind the page. It is commonly used for making documents searchable (by
adding keywords). The data included in a meta-tag is useful for
servers, web browsers, and search engines but is invisible to the
reader. A document may have any number of meta-tags:
- Description – This provides a brief plain-language
description of the contents of your web page, which is
particularly useful if your document contains little text, is
a frameset, or has extensive scripts at the top of the HTML
document. Search engines that recognize the description tag may
display it in the search results listed. Some search engines
only use the first 20 words of descriptions, so get to the
point quickly.
| e.g. |
| <meta name="description"
content="A helpful Elephant related site on the
Internet to find out anything
about elephants."> |
- Keywords – You can supplement the title and description of
the document by providing a list of comma-separated keywords
that would be useful in indexing your document. Some search
engines do not read your keywords tag. It is important not to
repeat an identical word formation more than 3 times here. Try
to keep this tag to under 45 words.
| e.g. |
| <meta name="keywords"
content="elephant, Elephants, Pachyderm, ELEPHANT,
ivory, tusk, tusker, news, compassion, rights, care,
repository, information, Elephant infrasound, endangered
species, elephant.elehost.com"> |
- Author – Identifies the author of the web page.
| e.g. |
| <meta name="creator" content="Elehost
Web Design Inc."> |
- Copyright – Identifies the copyright information for the
document.
| e.g. |
| <meta name="copyright"
content="Copyright by Elehost Web Design Inc.1999.
All Rights Reserved."> |
In employing keywords it is helpful to target your search
criteria. The most common method is to identify your competition
since they will be closely related to your site. Once you know what
keywords worked for the "leaders", you can follow their
path. Run an inquiry (on the below application) by entering your
URL and it will generate a report on your 2 main meta tags. This will
provide you with some basic checking on your keyword dominance.
Keyword Count - www.keywordcount.com:
A free service to analyze your meta tags and keywords. Use this to
analyze your keywords and to see how they compare to your competitors.
Although you may have much to say, keep it to a few pertinent words
for your keyword searches (focus on five or less). To refine keyword searches for
effectiveness you will have to build upon the area of your
concern, that is, playing with the good and weeding out the bad. A
ranking in the top ten results is a sign of superior language
manipulation. Please note that if you use words in different ways
such as pluralizing them adding an -ing or another prefix or
suffix, the main body of the word may not show up in your top ten,
but this will certainly be influential in helping your search
engine listing as most search engines will look for your search
word within other words as well. This is the easiest way to repeat
a word without search engines realizing that the word is being
repeated.
- Next Step -
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