Search Engine Optimisation – The Basics
12th March 2013
SEO & Marketing

Search Engine Optimisation – The Basics

In the complicated world of Search Engine Optimisation, there are many factors that determine your websites ranking but some of the simplest things are still important.

When a search engine is visiting (or indexing) your website it search through the websites code to help create a listing for each of the pages and also uses the information to rank them amongst other sites on the web. Each webpage should contain three vital tags to help aid in developing a relevant and high ranking listing. These three tags are the ‘title’, ‘meta description’ and the ‘meta keywords’.

Here at Digital Developments, all the sites we create allow you to edit and change these three tags without the need to know any coding, allowing you to improve your search engine listings. Below we will explain each of these three tags, what they do and what you can do to get the most out of these tags:

Title – The title is probably the most important of the three tags. This tag is what appears in the top bar of your web browser when viewing the page, but also what will appear as the link on your search engine listing. This will aid in targeting certain words or phrases that  you would like each page to be found from.

Title Tips

With the billions of pages on the web, having certain phrases or words in your title aren’t going to guarantee your going to appear as the top listing, on the first page or even in the first 10 pages. Therefore it’s smart to be relevant and specific with what you place in the page title, because if you are vague you have zero chance of being found.

For example, if we as web designers just put the phrase ‘Web Design’ in our title we have to compete with every other web design company in the world. If you think logically, some genuinely looking for our service will most likely be specific when searching the internet. Something like  ‘Web Design South East Melbourne‘ would not only be easier to rank on but should also produce more genuine leads.

Try typing in ‘Web Design’ and ‘Web Design South East Melbourne‘ in Google and see the results for yourself.

Meta Description – Unlike the title, the meta description isn’t viewable to users but is read by search engines though the website code. The meta description will be used by some search engines to give some body text to your listing. This is the text that will appear underneath your the site title on the search engine. However, some search engines ignore this and generate a listing description from the pages content.

Meta Description Tips

It is important to keep your descriptions short and to the point. Search engines aren’t going to allow you to have an essay underneath your listing title and will be restricted in length. Each search engine is different but most will index around 200-250 characters but will probably actually display less than that. Make your description is relevant and clearly descriptions what is on the page.

Meta Keywords
Probably the least important of the three is the meta keywords. These are used to further emphasize and target words that your think are relevant to the page and would like to be found using. However, in recent years some search engines, including Google, tend to shy away from indexing your meta keywords, but it’s still a good idea to add these just in case.

Meta Keywords Tips

Once again, the amount of meta keywords you use are restricted by the search engine, so it is advised that you add around 20-25 words, separated by commas. Try to use relevant and specific keywords.

Summary

Remember that just these tags alone won’t skyrocket your website to the top of the search engines, but allows you specify  how you want to be found. Search Engine Optimization is an ongoing thing that require constant tweaks and changes to keep up to date with the complicated algorithms that search engines use to rank websites.