Tryangled Solutions web designing tips tricks

META tags are hidden code read only by search engine webcrawlers (also called spiders). They live within the HEAD section of a web page. There are actually 2 very important META tags you need to worry about: description and keywords.
1. description
2. keywords
Sequencing of these tags may be extremely important. I say “may” because SEO is mostly hypothesis due to the changing algorithms of the search engines. Even though the W3C states that tag attributes do not have to be in any particular sequence, I’ve noticed a significant difference when I have the tags and attributes in the order described here. The only deviation from the list above is that the Title tag should come before the META description.

The description META tag is the text that will be displayed under your title on the results page. See the OC Internet Advertising example above. There’s also a lot of controversy about the number of characters you should have in this tag. I’ve seen sites with a paragraph in their description listed in the top results, so I don’t think the number of characters here plays any kind of role with the search engines.

<meta name=”description” content=”your_keywords_here followed by a statement about your product service or organization.” />

The last important META tag is the keywords META tag, which some time ago lost a lot of points in Google’s search engine algorithm. Along with being valuable to this top 10 SEO tips list, this tag is still important to many other search engines and should not be ignored. Based on my experience with this tag, you can have approximately 800 characters in this tag (including spaces).

A complete guide to search engine optimization would be book-length, and would be out of date as soon as it was published, but here are several tips for building a website with search engine optimization in mind:

1. Every page on your site must have a unique title tag, meta keywords tag, and meta description tag.

2. Follow W3C recommendations for HTML document structure. Begin the body copy of your page with your keyword phrase, and repeat it as needed as the theme of the page throughout your copy. Feature your keyword phrase prominently by including it in headers and making it bold or italics.

3. Use text navigation on your site, and use the keyword phrases you have selected as the links. If you cannot use text navigation, include a footer on every page using text links.

4. Build a text site map, and link to it from every page of your site.

5. Organize your navigation according to the importance of your keyword phrases. If you break your site into many pages, link to the most important pages from every page of your site, and link to the other pages from section header pages and the site map.

6. Establish your site by submitting to the major directories, The Open Directory and the Yahoo! Directory, then build your link popularity by submitting to web directories, search engines, and requesting links from related websites.

7. Be patient. A search engine optimization project can take quite some time to work.

For Google’s suggestions on search engine optimization, see Google Information for Webmasters - Webmaster Guidelines.

Build quality links to your site pages from other well ranked sites on your target search engine.

Make sure you provide quality content that have something unique to offer and that have keywords or key phrases people might search to find your site.

Optimize you web site pages by making sure your top keywords appear in your title, meta tags and content.

If you sell products, give something away free (The word “free” is one of the top most searched words on the internet).

Keep a track of your listings/ranking in the top 10 search engines and analyze it periodically. Some tips on this:

Indexed Pages: To know which pages on your site are listed in the search engine and to see how they will appear to searchers type site:www.yourdomainname.extn in the search box, You might need to use host: instead for some of the search engines.

Link Popularity: To keep a track of sites that link to you (and also see their page rank), type link:www.yourdomainname.extn in the search box,You might need to use url: instead for some of the search engines.

Some search engines are now indexing Web documents by the meta tags in the documents’ HTML (at the beginning of the document in the so-called “head” tag). What this means is that the Web page author can have some influence over which keywords are used to index the document, and even in the description of the document that appears when it comes up as a search engine hit.

This is obviously very important if you are trying to draw people to your website based on how your site ranks in search engines hit lists.

There is no perfect way to ensure that you’ll receive a high ranking.  Even if you do get a great ranking, there’s no assurance that you’ll keep it for long.  For example, at one period a page from the Spider’s Apprentice was the number- one-ranked result on Altavista for the phrase “how search engines work.”   A few months later, however, it had dropped lower in the listings.

There is a lot of conflicting information out there on meta-tagging.  If you’re confused it may be because different search engines look at meta tags in different ways.  Some rely heavily on meta tags, others don’t use them at all.  The general opinion seems to be that meta tags are less useful than they were a few years ago, largely because of the high rate of spamdexing (web authors using false and misleading keywords in the meta tags).

Note:  Google, currently the most popular search engine, does not index the keyword metatags.  Be aware of this is you are optimizing your webpages for the Google engine.

It seems to be generally agreed that the “title” and the “description” meta tags are important to write effectively, since several major search engines use them in their indices.   Use relevant keywords in your title, and vary the titles on the different pages that make up your website, in order to target as many keywords as possible.  As for the “description” meta tag, some search engines will use it as their short summary of your url, so make sure your description is one that will entice surfers to your site.

Note:  The “description” meta tag is generally held to be the most valuable, and the most likely to be indexed, so pay special attention to this one.

In the keyword tag, list a few synonyms for keywords, or foreign translations of keywords (if you anticipate traffic from foreign surfers).  Make sure the keywords refer to, or are directly related to, the subject or material on the page.  Do NOT use false or misleading keywords in an attempt to gain a higher ranking for your pages.

The “keyword” meta tag has been abused by some webmasters.  For example, a recent ploy has been to put such words “sex” or “mp3″ into keyword meta tags, in hopes of luring searchers to one’s website by using popular keywords.

The search engines are aware of such deceptive tactics, and have devised various methods to circumvent them, so be careful.  Use keywords that are appropriate to your subject, and make sure they appear in the top paragraphs of actual text on your webpage.  Many search engine algorithms score the words that appear towards the top of your document more highly than the words that appear towards the bottom.  Words that appear in HTML header tags (H1, H2, H3, etc) are also given more weight by some search engines.  It sometimes helps to give your page a file name that makes use of one of your prime keywords, and to include keywords in the “alt” image tags.

One thing you should not do is use some other company’s trademarks in your meta tags.  Some website owners have been sued for  trademark violations because they’ve used other company names in the meta tags.  I have, in fact, testified as an expert witness in such cases.  You do not want the expense of being sued!

Remember that all the major search engines have slightly different policies.  If you’re designing a website and meta-tagging your documents, we recommend that you take the time to check out what the major search engines say in their help files about how they each use meta tags.  You might want to optimize your meta tags for the search engines you believe are sending the most traffic to your site.

<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOARCHIVE”>

<META NAME="GOOGLEBOT" CONTENT="NOARCHIVE">

meta NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOODP”

This will redirect to a http://blog.tryangled.com after 5 seconds.
<META http-equiv=”refresh” content=”5;URL=http://blog.tryangled.com” />

You may have heard many times about the ways you can optimize your site for search engines. Optimizing your site can allow the search engines to extract the important information from your page, making your site appear for more relevant search queries. Search engines may also better rank your page, so it appears at higher positions within results pages.

I have compiled a list of the best 5 ways (in my opinion) to optimize your site for the search engines:

1. Put keywords in your title. Try to place keywords relevant to your site in your page title. This will give the search engines a better idea of what your site is about, and also allows searchers to quickly determine whether your site is relevant to them.
2. Use Headings. Using headings in your webpage gives some structure to your page, and makes searching the page for relevant information quick. Try to place some relevant keywords in the headings, which give a clue to what the paragraphs below it are about.
3. Use alt=”" in images. As images can’t be understood by search engines, you should provide an alternative textual description of the image. You can do this using the alt attribute of the HTML image tag. Here’s an example:

<img src=”dog.jpg” alt=”Dog jumping into the air” />

4. Use META tags. You should use META tags within your page, to describe what the document is about, as well as provide relevant keywords and define a language.
5. Use a sitemap. Create a sitemap to show all the pages of your site. I recommend you add your sitemap to Google’s Sitemap service, or Yahoo’s service.

Having a Web site that gets found in Google isn’t hard to do, but it can be difficult to know where to begin. Here are ten tips to get you started.

1. Start out slowly. If possible, begin with a new site that has never been submitted to the search engines or directories. Choose an appropriate domain name, and start out by optimizing just the home page.

2. Learn basic HTML. Many search engine optimization techniques involve editing the behind the scenes HTML code. Your high rankings can depend on knowing which codes are necessary, and which aren’t.

3. Choose keywords wisely. The keywords you think might be perfect for your site may not be what people are actually searching for. To find the optimal keywords for your site, use tools such as WordTracker. Choose two or three highly targeted phrases for each page of your site. Never shoot for general keywords such as “travel” or “vacation.”

4. Write at least 200 - 250 words of visible text copy based on your chosen keywords. This is a crucial component to high rankings and a successful Web site. The search engines need to “read” keyword rich copy on your pages so they can successfully classify your site. Use each keyword phrase numerous times within your copy for best results.

5. Create a killer Title tag. HTML title tags are critical because they’re given a lot of weight with all of the search engines. You must put your keywords into this tag and not waste space with extra words. Do not use the Title tag to display your company name or to say “Home Page.” Think of it more as a “Title Keyword Tag” and create it accordingly. Add your company name to the end of this tag, if you must use it.

6. Create Meaty Meta tags. Meta tags can be valuable, but they are not a magic bullet. Create a Meta Description tag that uses your keywords and also describes your site. The information in this tag often appears under your Title in the search engine results pages.

The Meta Keyword tag isn’t quite as important as the Meta Description tag. Contrary to popular belief, what you place in the keyword tag will have very little bearing on what keywords your site is actually found under, and it’s not given any consideration whatsoever by Google. Use this tag, but do not obsess over.

7. Use extra “goodies” to boost rankings. Things like headlines, image alt tags, header tags <H1><H2>, etc.), links from other pages, keywords in file names, and keywords in hyperlinks can cumulatively boost search engine rankings. Use any or all of these where they make sense for your site.

8. Be careful when submitting to directories such as Yahoo and the Open Directory Project (DMOZ). Having directory listings are a key component to getting your site spidered and listed by Google. Making mistakes in the submission process could cost you dearly as directory listings are difficult to change later in the game. Therefore, it’s important to read Yahoo’s How to Suggest Your Site and How to add a site to the Open Directory before submitting.

9. Don’t expect quick results. Getting high rankings takes time; there’s no getting around that fact. Once your site is added to a search engine or directory, its ranking may start out low and then slowly work its way up the ladder. Some search engines measure “click-through popularity,” i.e., the more people that click on a particular site, the higher its ranking will go. Be patient and give your site time to mature.

10. Don’t constantly “tweak” your site for better results. It’s best not to make changes to your optimization for at least three-to-six months after submission. It often takes the engines at least that long to add your optimized pages to their databases. Submit it, and then forget about it for a while!

If you’ve followed these tips and still can’t find your site in the engines, the first place to “tweak” would be your page copy. If you added less than 250 words of visible text on your pages, this is probably your culprit. Also, double check your keyword density, and make sure that you only targeted two or three phrases per page. Eventually, you’ll see the fruits of your labor with many top ten rankings in Google and the rest of the search engines!