The Composition of a Search Optimized Web Page
How well a search engine rates a web page is determined in part by the optimization of components on that web page.
While it is entirely possible to build a well optimized page without realizing it, knowing what types of things are typically looked at by search engines when deciding the order to display pages in can help your pages rank higher reliably.
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The Components of an Optimized Web Page
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- The Page Title
- Page Section: <head>
- HTML Tag: <title></title>
- Shown to users in browser title bars and tab names
- Used as the default bookmark name
- Meta Description
- Page Section: <head>
- HTML Tag: <meta name=”description” content="" />
- Shown to users as the page summary in some search engines
- Not shown to users on your site by most browsers
- See noodp and noydir for getting this to show in Google and Yahoo
- Meta Keywords
- Page Section: <head>
- HTML Tag: <meta name="keywords" content="" />
- Not shown to users by most browsers and search engines
- Not used as much as it used to be by major search engines
- Content
- Page Section: <body>
- Important tags in your page body:
- Header Tags
- HTML Tag: <h1></h1>, <h2></h2>, <h3></h3>, <h4></h4>, <h5></h5>, <h6></h6>
- Used on page to surround important information such as the page title, subheaders, site title, etc.
- Image Alt, Title, and SRC Tags
- HTML Tag: <img src="" alt="" title="" />
- Image is displayed to viewers
- Alt is displayed if the image cannot be displayed
- Title is shown when the image is hovered over
- Bold, Underline, and Emphasize Tags
- HTML Tags: <b></b>, <u></u>, <em></em>,
- Displays enclosed text in bold, underlines it, or emphasizes it
- Hyperlink Tags
- HTML Tag: <a href="" rel="" title="" target=""></a>
- Creates links to other pages or items on the internet
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| Keywords as Applied to Page Creation |
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When creating a content page on the internet, it is a good idea to consider what the page is going to be about and then decide upon primary words and/or phrases that you want to focus on in the page.
These words and phrases, commonly called keywords, let you easily build well targeted pages that search engines will rank well.
When deciding upon key words and phrases for a page that you want people to find, it is a good idea to do at least a little bit of keyword research.
Keyword research consists of finding out what words and phrases people actually use when looking for the kind of information you are going to provide on your page.
By doing keyword research before you build a page, you can reinforce the page to rank well for searches on your chosen keywords.
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Resources:
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| The Page Title Tag |
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Your page title is used to tell people and search robots what your page is about.
This is not the title displayed to readers, but rather the title that is included in the head section of your html document.
- A strong title should:
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- Include the primary keyword for your page
- Tell people what the page is about
If you are familiar with information marketing, many of the concepts which apply to an article title apply just as well to a page title.
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| The Meta Description Tag |
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This tag is used to tell people what the page is about in a few short sentences.
It is most commonly used to display a brief summary of the page for people who are browsing lists of pages, particularly in search engines.
- A strong meta description should:
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- Include your primary keyword near the front of if it
- Include a couple of secondary keywords
- Read naturally
- Tell people what benefit reading the page will bring them
- Tell people what is on the page
From an information marketing standpoint, your meta description should be treated much like an article summary.
To get Google to show your meta description, use the noodp command in your robots header tag.
To get Yahoo to show your meta description, use the noydir command in your robots header tag.
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Resources:
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| The Meta Keyword Tag |
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This tag is used to tell people what the primary keywords for your page are.
These days, it is typically not used by the major search engines due to the fact that pages themselves note what is on them and it is easily abused by webmasters.
However, it is still used by some engines and, if you don’t mind people knowing specifically which words you are targeting on a page, placing them here is a good idea.
When creating a meta keyword tag:
- Avoid repetitive keywords
- For example:
- Toys, Kids Toys, Children’s Toys, Boys Toys, Toddler Toys, Girls Toys, Infants Toys, Wooden Toys, Fun Toys
- Toy, Kid, Child, Boy, Girl, Infant, Wood, Fun
- The first entry might be seen as keyword stuffing by search engines because you are using the same word within a lot of different phrases.
- The second entry cuts out the redundancy and uses each word once.
- Avoid words unrelated to the page in question
- This may seem obvious, but if you are going to specify keywords, they should be relevant to the current page.
Other than not stuffing your meta keywords tag and using relevant words, I wouldn’t worry too much about this attribute as it is viewed as unreliable by most search engines.
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| Page Content and Tags |
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When building a page to rank well with search engines, keep the following in mind:
- Strong content and readability are important
- Good content will tend to naturally have a good mix of keywords, get people to read your page, and even get people to link back to it or refer other people to it.
- Search engines are trying to think like people, so you really don’t need to spend a lot of time fretting over the optimal number of keywords to include in your page. use your targeted keywords in a natural manner while providing good content and you should not need to revise pages for search ranking purposes.
- Use your primary keyword in your page title and surround the title with H1 tags
- If your displayed page title matches the page title in the html head section, all the better.
- Placing H1 tags around the displayed page title tells search engines that it is the most important thing on the page.
- By using your primary keyword and enclosing it in H1 tags, you are telling search engines that your title is important and that your primary keyword is as well.
- Use H2, H3, etc. tags for sections of your page
- If you are writing content that breaks down well into subsections with subheaders, you can note that your subheaders are important by using header tags around them. This gives them more emphasis than using specific bold or underline tags.
- When including images:
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- Give them descriptive alt tags
- Alt tags are displayed when an image cannot be displayed for some reason.
- If you use your alt tag to provide a short description of what is being shown, search engines will know what is being displayed.
- Give your images good names
- If you include an image of an apple pie, give it an appropriate name.
- img0124534.jpg doesn’t tell search engines anything.
- fresh-baked-apple-pie.jpg does tell search engines something useful.
- Give your images a good title
- The title tag not only tells search engines about the image, it also displays in most browsers when a user hovers their mouse over it.
- Emphasize important words or ideas
- If you do not link important words or phrases, you can make them stand out with bold, underline, or emphasis tags.
- Search engines often use these tags to tell what things on a page are important.
- Build good hyperlinks
- When placing links on your pages:
- Use title tags to give a short description of where a user is going
- These are normally displayed when someone puts their pointer over a link.
- Choose good names for your links
- Linked text is typically considered to be emphasized.
- "How to bake an apple pie" might be better than "Johnnies page" if the page tells people how to bake an apple pie.
- Use rel="nofollow" attributes liberally
- By including this attribute in your links, you avoid passing page rank on to linked pages.
- I would recommend including this attribute on both external links ( unless you want to promote someone elses site ) and links to pages on your own site which you don’t want to pass page rank onto from other pages ( your about me page, contact page, terms of service, etc. )
- Use target="_blank" for external links that lead to other peoples sites
- This will cause the link to open in a different window or tab by default.
- It leaves your page open and opens a new one…so when they are done looking at the other one, your page is still there.
The most important thing is your content. If you give people what they are looking for, chances are that at least some of them will link to your page and/or refer it to other people…giving your site even more traffic.
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