01 May 09 SEO SIMPLIFIED: KEYWORD PLACEMENT PART – II

Written by: bikram

In the last article, we listed the HTML Meta tags that we can use to place our keywords to get maximum attention from search engines. In this article, we will discuss the nature of some of those HTML Meta tags. Not all tags are created equal; some are more important than others. We shall start with the important tags and then we should move downwards, but before that let us discuss in brief about meta elements, metadata and where it is placed.

Metadata is data about data. It helps search engine in getting useful information about the website. We use meta elements to place metadata in the webpage. Meta elements are placed as tags in the head section of HTML or XHTML pages. Placing keywords in the following metatags are must have to get search engines notice your website.

Title Tag: It is important to have keyword in Title because the search engine treats the word written in title tag as page title. The length of a title tag should be at max 6-7 words.

Domain Name: Having a keyword in your domain name will help your website rank higher in the search engine.

URL: Using a keyword in URL of each page will help you build separate ranking for each webpage of your website.

Keyword tag: This metatag hold a list of keywords separated by comma for which you want to rank your site. In the recent years, the popularity of this metatag has gone down as Google has stopped relying on it. Keyword tag is more susceptible to SPAMS. Still, I will suggest you to use this tag, as using this will not have any negative effect on your website.

Discription tag: This metatag tells the user what the website is about. Keep this tag short and succinct, and keep the length of the description tag within 159 characters. Description tags for each webpage should be unique. This metatag has also lost some of its vitality but this tag still functions as it gives the searcher a brief idea about the webpage.

Heading Tags (h1, h2, h3, h4, etc.): Placing keywords in heading tags will build trust for your content. This will signal the search engine that the content of your webpage is very relevant to the keyword it has been optimized for; hence, search engine will reward you for this by giving your webpage a better rank.

Alt Tag: Search engine cannot see pictures, so they use artificial eyes to see which images are posted on the webpage and how much they are relevant to the content. The alt tag is that artificial eye of the search engine. Using proper keyword in alt tags will help your webpage get better rank.

Link Text: Use keywords with modifiers for all the internal links that you have on your website. This also helps your website rank better in the search engines.

Site Maps: Site map is nothing but a list of pages you have on your website. It can be of two types, HTLM and XML. XML site maps are the nice way to inform Google about your website, we recommend using keywords in sitemap as well.