Optimizing for Search Engines, Page Construction, Title Tag - Part Two.
So you have your list of keywords. You did your homework and sorted the quality ones from non. Now you need to look at your website. If you already have a website and are trying to optimize it, this information will apply just as for building a brand new website.
The Home Page
Home page is not going to get very much attention at this time and probably will not rank as good as your products pages. This is because your home page is going to hold a general overview of what the web site’s purpose is. If you are selling shoes, the home page will greet the visitor and let him know that this site sells shoes, will show brand names, maybe a few featured shoes and so on, nothing specific. So the only keywords you can use on this page is going to be the broad words like “shoes”, “nike”, “reebok”, etc. Do not expect to rank well for these words in search engines, most of the traffic coming from the search engines will be directed from your product pages. If you can come up with some scheme where your home page could have unique content on it to which you can apply some specific keywords then you can apply the same techniques to it and expect results.
Products/Services Page(s)
Are you ready to get your elbows dirty? Ok, here we go.
The first thing you will need to do is make sure that every product, I mean everymodel, size, color and shape has it’s own page. This is going to be a boring tedious process but for best results this is what needs to be done.
You are going to be focusing on 8 elements:
- Title
- META Title
- META Keywords
- META Description
- H2 - H4 Tags
- Descriptive Text
- Image Alt Text
- Link Title Text
I will take you through each element in detail.
Title
This is what the Title tag looks like in the HTML code:
<html>
<head>
<title>Page title goes here</title>
</head>
<body>Page body goes here</body>
</html>
The text that you put into this area should be short, about 64 characters. It’s not a huge deal if it’s longer or shorter, that is just the ideal length. What you have to worry about is when search engines index this information they will sometimes cut off the title text at 64 characters.
You want to cram as much relevant, specific information in there while still keeping the title readable by a human.
META Title
Here is what the META Title Tag looks like in the HTML code:
<html>
<head>
<title>Title Text</title>
<META NAME=”TITLE” CONTENT=”Title Text” >
</head>
<body>
Page body.
</body>
</html>
The META Title tag works just like the <title> tag and is considered to be just as important for search engine optimization. I usually enter the same title for the META Title as I did in the <title> tag.
Google uses this tag’s contents, for the web page’s title in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). The way this works is, if Google finds a web page worthy and the rest of the page supports the relevancy of the <title> tag and the META Title, it will then use this text as the title when it displays your page’s listing on the SERP.
You have to remember that all the pages on your web site should have unique content. This includes the <title> and the META Title. No other page on your site should have the same title. If Google bots finds two pages on your site, or even anywhere on the Internet that are identical, it will rank one page more important than the other. How it makes this decision? Nobody knows. A Google bot is exactly what it sounds like, a bot. It does as it’s programming says, it will not judge as you could, so why let this thing judge your pages. You have the power to tell the bot exactly what it should do. There is too much competition out there to compete between your own pages. So let the bot choose your’s over competition but don’t let it choose between your own.
This is why your titles have to be unique! On every page, make your titles specific to the product or service that is offered. Make every page about one, only one topic, product or service. Focus! Focus! Focus!
Make it as easy as possible for the bots out there. Don’t make them think. Think of it this way, the easier it is for them, the better they’ll rank your page.
Bots Don’t Like SPAM
Yes, SPAM. Using titles like “Shoes cool shoes nike super duper shoes” is not a good title. It will probably be concidered as SPAM.
If you are focusing on the word “shoes”, don’t!
You need to focus on, what kind of shoes you are offering, what size, style?
So the keyword you are focusing is….?
Correct, “Nike Air Force One”. And the title should say something like “Sale on Nike Air Force One Shoes, size 12” or “Lowest Price on Nike Air Force One Shoes, size 12“. Utilise secondary keywords, like in this case I used “Sale” and “Lowest Price”. This makes your title unique and powerful.
A few DON’Ts:
- Don’t include your keyword in the title more than twice.
- Don’t just list words, write a sentence.
- Don’t be afraid to make the title longer than 64 characters if you need to. Just have your keyword within the first 64.
And a few DOs:
- Do make the title readable & grammatically correct. (You only get a first impression once.)
- Do make the title specific.
- Do make the title descriptive.
- Do make the title unique.
I will continue to META Keywords in the next post.