Meta Tags and Keywords and SEO

Next we want to use the keywords in the Meta Tags which are located inside the code of your page, you along with any surfers that find you page will not see these Meta Tags but they are still important for Search Engines

Before we get deep into Meta Tags I think that it would help to explain a little bit of the history of Meta Tags and Search Engines

Up until fairly recently in the last couple of years or so, it was very important to make sure you inserted the keyword and description Meta Tags in the code of your site, this was because all search engines of the time were Metacrawlers

This meant that they indexed sites based on your keyword and description Meta Tags along with you page title, they did take into account your content but there was a big reliance on your Meta tags

SEO Heading H1 Tag and Keywords

In the last post we discussed the use of a keyword in the title and the importance of having a decorative title which is often overlooked by the amateur web designer

Just as important is the H1 tag or Heading , when creating pages make sure that you also create a heading for each page this will insert the H1 tag into your html

As with the title try to make sure you have a relevant keyword or phrase in this heading

Make sure that the keyword is relevant to your site and this particular page

Keywords more uses for achieving good SE Rankings

Those key words and phrases that you worked so hard on have lots of uses so make sure you keep a list of them in a text or word processing document

The importance of your Title

Make sure that when building your site and adding new pages that you add a title, often in WYSIWYG html editors you use the create new page function to launch a new page, these program automatically defaults the title to Untitled Document

You would be amazed at how many websites have pages with the title Untitled Document simply because the creator forgot the change the title

This is where the keyword comes in again, use one or two of your keywords in the title for example

Your company manufactures or sell widgets and you are creating a page about blue widgets giving details of the sizes etc that you make, then you would title the page Blue Widgets Types and Sizes

Search Engines look at your page titles and check them with the content on the page to make sure they are both relevant to each other

If they are you will rank you higher in the Search Engines, but dont simply stuff your page titles with keywords use just one or two and keep the page titles relatively short

Quality Content Counts

Relevant quality content is the most important issue in helping your search engine optimization, we have discussed this in our last post.

The more relevant quality content you site has then the more likely it is too score above your competitors in the search engines

This is why some listing sites have forums relating to the listing for instance property rental in a certain area, at the back of this site they may have a forum where you can discuss all thing related to the listing site and area

As 100s of people will be posting messages onto these forums often mentioning the keywords and key phrases, this will increase the listing sites rankings.

Often listing sites will offer a system for making your listing more visible by offering you the chance to earn points by writing personal reviews of a subject related to the listing site or area

This also has the effect of increasing their rankings within a search engine by increasing the keywords and phrases but also it will have the affect of showing the search engine spiders that the site is updated with fresh content

This is another way to increase your search engine fresh regular new content

Keywords and Content

OK so now we have done some homework and have found some good keywords and keyword phrases, you now need to use these in the content on your site

I mentioned in an earlier article that the most important aspect to consider in successful SEO is content, this mean that the information on your web site must be relevant to the keywords that you have selected

The keywords and phrases that you have selected are an estimate as to what surfers looking for a product or service that you sell will be using in a search engine

Your site must have information that is connected with the surfers keywords that they type into Google and searches on and you must keep this in mind when you are writing the text for your page. Search engines take more that just the text into account but the text (content) is the most important area to consider

Make sure that you mention the keywords you have chosen in the text up to about 3 times and make sure that you also mention the alternative keywords and phrases also

Do not simply fill the pages with badly written sentences made up of keywords as the search engine spiders will mark this as spam and NEVER list a load of keywords at the bottom of the page and try to hide them by making them a similar colour to you background, this is a very old idea and will get you banned from search engines

Good Keyword Choices and Alternatives for SEO

How to choose Keywords

In my last post we discussed keywords and how to select relevant keywords for your site and more importantly choosing the less completive keywords by spending a little time searching on the big 3 search engines

Sometimes its difficult to come up with enough keywords that have the same meaning but are different so that you do not end up using the same keywords over and over on your site

This is also important because if you simply keep repeating the same keyword over and over a search engine will score this as spamming and as a result your search engine rankings will be greatly reduced

Everyone who has Microsoft office installed on their PC has a simple tool that they can use to help them choose words called Thesaurus you may or may not be aware of this

Simply select the keyword in word and press Shit+F7 and you will see a list of other words with a similar meaning this I have found this can be a very useful tool

Ok so now you have a good number of keywords, keep a note of them because you will need them later when you will insert the Meta keywords into the code of your pages

Most Important Consideration for Successful SEO

What is the most important thing about successful SEO ?

The No1 thing you should consider when starting your SEO campaign is good quality relevant content , this should be your first item to consider above all else

Content what is content you will ask , well this mean lots of written text within the pages of your web site that is relevant to your chosen keywords or key word phrases

Careful planning before you start to build your web site will help you greatly in this area
Sit down in front of your PC and think of the keywords that you would use to find your web site , type them into Google , Yahoo and Msn and look at the results

For example I did a search on affordable webdesign and Google came back with the following stats

Results 1 - 10 of about 43,800 for affordable webdesign

Another search with different keywords used cheap web site design

Results 1 - 10 of about 154,000,000 for cheap web site design

This tells me that there is 3 times more competition for the keywords cheap web site design

So I would be better using the keywords affordable webdesign in the content of my site