Your Web Page Title

Your Web Page Title is an important part of your organization's web page. The title is the first thing that is seen when a web page is loaded on both a customer's web browser or a Search Engine Spider. Search Engines examine your web page and decide on where your web page will be listed by focusing in on your web page's title.

You are able to adjust your title by editing your html title tag. The title tag is located near the top of your html source and looks similar to:

<TITLE>My Organization's Web Page</TITLE>

Because your title is so important in the search engine cataloging and ranking process, you need to make your title as descriptive as possible. There is a maximum of 70 characters allowed for your web page's title, so use them wisely!

Search Engines suggest that you make your title tag look similar to:

<TITLE>My Organization Name - keyword, keyword 2, 
keyword 3, keyword 4, keyword 5, keyword 6</TITLE>

Meta Tags also play an important role when a Web Search Engine looks at your page and prepares to catalog and rank it. Meta tags are located in the header of your web page's html source, and should look something like:

<META name="keywords" content="keyword 1, keyword 2, 
keyword 3, keyword 4, keyword 5, keyword 6, keyword 7, keyword 8,
keyword 9, keyword 10, keyword 11, keyword 12">

The keywords you use should be the phrases or words your customers would enter into a search engine query to find your goods or services. You should assume that 50% of your customers are not quite sure what exactly they are looking for, so you need to be very detailed in your key words. Cover the spectrum as fully as possible to give your customers the best chance of finding you!

You can even repeat your keywords up to six times. Search Engines rate your web site by relevancy to the user's query. The more words that you have that match what the user is looking for, the more of a chance that you will be visited by them. You can duplicate your keywords a maximum of 6 times, and they must not be right next to each other.

The maximum limit of characters in your meta keywords tag is 1000, so be as detailed as possible!

Your website's source HTML should also include a meta description tag. This meta tag resides in the header of your HTML source and looks similar to the following:

<META name="description" content="Visit MyOrganization 
for the best selection of computer equipment, software, and 
hardware. MyOrganization specializes in customer service 
and training for all computing needs">

The Meta Tag Description is simply wordage that most search engines also take into consideration when researching your site to include into their lists. Your Meta Tag Description should make the end-user want to visit your site. You are limited to around 25 words or 250 characters, but if used correctly it should prove sufficient.

You can even repeat the keywords in your description a couple of times. Search Engines rate your web site by relevancy to the user's query. The more words that you have that match what the user is looking for, the more of a chance that you will be visited by them. You can duplicate your keywords a maximum of 6 times, and they must not be right next to each other.

More and more pages today have a completely graphical interface, and with that comes certain problems. Many of the search engines go to body of your web page and catalog the text of your web site. Some search engines read the text to verify keywords found in your Meta tags and Title tags. A couple of the major engines do nothing but read the first megabyte of text on your page and catalog your page from what they find there.

If your web page is completely graphical and has no text, a search engine can not catalog your web page's content.

To achieve higher rankings in search engines, you should include, at least, 100 words of text on your web page containing the keywords that are also found in your meta tags. You can even repeat the keywords in the body text up to 6 times. Search engines suggest that you do not repeat your keywords one right after another, but break them up between other keywords.

Some people try to fool search engines by coloring the body text the same color as the background. Search Engines are wise to this scheme, so always make sure that both people AND search engines can see your body text! You can use your required body text in quotations as customer comments or perhaps as a review from a magazine, if you've been written up. Be creative and get some visible text in that web page!

Framed web pages have become very popular in the past year or so, but, unfortunately ALL of the major search engines have reported problems in cataloging these pages. A framed page consists of at least one page existing on the same page as another. This layering of web pages confuses Search Engine spiders and thusly they are unable to catalog your web page.

Search Engines suggest that you create a splash / welcome page for your web site. This welcome page is just a basic, non-framed, front page that has all the above meta, title, and text information and a graphic that proclaims "Click Here to Enter". You may also want to include special html tags that will move the user's web browser to your next page after a few seconds. If you choose to include these special tags, be sure to include a delay of at least 5 seconds before moving the user to the framed web pages.