Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

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How to Organize Your Keyword Combinations and Keyphrases To Increase The Relevance and Ranking of Your Web Page

TUTORIAL
by Luigi Canali De Rossi
June 2002

**Overview**

Dear friends interested in gaining extra visibility and exposure on the Internet through the intelligent, ethical and smart use of the major search engines, your time has come.

You will learn how to best utilize the selected keyphrases you must have carefully identified and selected by using the WordTracker online service also reviewed in this issue.

Once you have great seeds in your hands, it is time to plant them properly.

In another lesson that I am refining before final publication, and entitled "Research Your Keywords", you will master how to identify the keyphrases that offer the most to your need for visibility and sales.

By identifying and targeting very specific knowledge niches through the selection of highly-crafted and well-tested keyphrases, you become able to empower any page on your Web site to become a unique marketing gate for a specific course, training service, or knowledge area of your organization.

In this lesson, you are going to explore and learn how to utilize the unique keyphrases that characterize your service, product or specialized know-how.

Studies have shown that people read differently on the Web than they do with printed documents. A 1997 study by John Morkes and Jakob Nielsen found that 79% of users scan a new Web page for keywords, sub-headings, and bulleted lists, while only 16% read the document word-by-word.
(http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ 9710a.html)

Most users who want to comprehensively read long documents will save the documents to disk, or print them, instead of reading them online.

This factor suggests that the structure of a document for the Web must be concise, scannable, and objective to be most effective to online readers.

In the same study, Morkes and Nielsen found that documents written in this manner had a "124% improvement in measured usability" over documents written in a promotional writing style. To make a document more scannable, paragraphs should be broken down so that each paragraph contains one central idea; pages should be broken down into discrete chunks of information.

As such, the construction of "themed" pages, which contain several instances and variations of the same keyphrase or concepts are very effective for increasing content usability and to gain effective search engines accessibility.

**Learning objectives**

In this lesson, you are going to master:

a) How to identify which components of your Web site will be the placeholders for your selected keyphrases.

b) How to prepare and place keyphrases in each of these Web page components.

c) What is the best way to test and measure the effectiveness of the placement of your keywords and keyphrases in your web pages.

**Why**

Strategically organizing and placing pre-selected keyphrases into your Web page(s) is essential to the overall online marketing workflow because it:

a) Provides search engines with the "hooks" they are looking for.

b) Prepares your organization's Web page to be "spidered" by search engines in the most effective way.

c) Makes your Web page an effective "knowledge niche".

d) Allows the ideal display of your Web site description on search engine results.

e) Facilitates navigation and access for users with disabilities.

f) Facilitates navigation and access for users with slow connections.

g) Facilitates navigation and access to users with their graphics turned off.

h) Increases usability of your Web site by allowing better bookmarking.

i) Increases your Web site ranking and relevance for your selected keywords inside search engines and major directories.

l) Uniquely differentiates your Web site from competitors and strengthens your leadership in your selected knowledge niche.

**Benefits**

a) Search engines are looking for rich and relevant content that fits and complements the web page theme/title you are publishing online. I call it simply R2C. That is what the search engines want.

b) Search engines do not care about fancy graphics, beautiful designs, and unique color combinations. They just want the facts, data, information. The more of these you provide, and the more "themed" or "specialized" your content is, the more the search engines will "like" your Web site.

c) When search engines need to incorporate your Web site into their database or "index", they send an electronic 'spider' to check your Web site out. This little piece of software can self-navigate the Internet. A 'spider' is rather like a probe, which comes to your Web site to read and "suck up" some or all of your content. A search engine spider reads your web site contents and it brings a copy back to its own search engine home. There at the SE (search engine) headquarters, the little "spider" feeds all the content from your Web site pages into the search engine's main database.

What happens from here on depends on what visitors to that search engine, will type in their search boxes.

Here is how it works:
The visitor enters in her search query in the search box.

The search engine looks through ALL of the Web pages it has in its database. It looks through pages that contain those keywords, as well as through pages that have developed an actual "theme" using those keywords.

As the search engine finds many valid matching results (Web sites) for a certain query, it ranks them according to the amount of rich and relevant content present on those Web pages.

While there are certainly other factors at play in the ranking of Web sites, R2C (rich and relevant content) is certainly one of the most important ones.

d) Search engine 'spiders' love rich and relevant content as well as good, effective use of keyphrases. The better you work at these, the better you will rank on all major search engines and directories.

e) By reinforcing the rich and relevant content already present in your Web pages with carefully selected keyphrases emerging from your keyword research (see previous lesson on MasterMind 17), your Web page truly becomes a 'knowledge niche' by itself. A knowledge niche can be said to be online content that provides a very targeted solution, and/or rich and relevant information on a specific topic, issue or problem. As such, a 'knowledge niche' has much relevance to search engine ranking and evaluation formulas or 'algorithms'.

f) The 'Description Meta Tag', which we will learn to use in this very lesson, is utilized by most search engines to derive a publishable description of your Web site to display next to your URL and Web page title in their search result pages. When a 'Description Meta Tag' is missing, the first words found in the text of your Web site are displayed as a substitute. This often creates the annoying situation in which menu text, or even unreadable HTML or Javascript code is displayed as a result of a Web site search. Missing their 'Description Meta Tag', the queried search engine will display what it has found as text in the first part of their page content (usually the first 200 characters or so).

g) Something many people do not know, or even consider, is how important it is to make your Web pages highly accessible and usable for all types and kinds of users. Why exclude some potential visitors from being able to access your Web site just because of ignorance or laziness? Users that do not have your same browser version, that have poor or slow modem connections, prospective customers who turn off their graphics to access faster Web sites that provide immediate solutions to their needs: should they all be penalized?

We are certainly talking about thousands or more of such users. These are not a few hundred rare cases. Can you afford to turn away or alienate thousands of prospective customers?

I say this now because the effective use of keyphrases and keywords, the adoption of the 'Description Meta Tag', and of the other complementary indexing components of your Web page, can tremendously help Internet users to:

1) Find your Web page.

2) Understand what it is about.

3) Navigate it with ease.

4) Memorize, store it or bookmark it in a more efficient way.

h) The game to play for visibility on search engines is differentiation. It is about being unique. The more you diversify yourself from the rest, the more visible you become.

Diversity = visibility. This is the winning formula online.

This is why I insist on finding and creating your unique knowledge niche. There is basically no limit to how far you can go this way.

i) The greatest and most sought-after benefit is to have a high ranking position on search engine result pages. By appropriately seeding your Web page with your selected keyphrases, search engines will rank your organization's Web site higher than your competitors, who likely have a more diluted concentration of relevant "theme" keywords.

**Expected outcomes**

I can already imagine you looking wide-eyed at the reports from your traffic analysis tool (more on this in the seventh PROSMOTE Masters lesson "Track Your Prospective Customers"). Like me, when I saw my first results using this approach, you will be very satisfied by the amount of relevant and targeted traffic you will have received following the instructions of this lesson.

Should you care about being listed in Yahoo or the ODP by your company or organization brand when you have been only a local or regional reality? Who would know you or search for your organization name outside your existing circle of clients and their contacts? NO-BO-DY!

When I say you will be startled and wide-eyed at the positive results that effective search engine marketing and positioning can achieve, it is because I am sure you will be puzzled by the relatively SMALL number of visitors showing up in your online traffic logs and revealing the UNUSUALLY HIGH percentage of subscriptions, contacts, sales, and positive responses you will be receiving from your visitors.

As a general reference keep in mind that a conversion ratio of 1-2% is considered the norm in effective direct marketing campaigns, and percentages of 3 to 6% are considered exceptionally good. The conversion ratio value is one if not the most important business indicator of how well of your Web site is performing and how effective it is in attracting potential customer leads that are looking specifically for what you have to offer or sell.

The time where we would evaluate a Web site success based on absolute traffic numbers are gone. That model could only serve outdated and ineffective strategies attempting to sell advertising and banner ads to the largest number of people. Such approach is so ineffective and contrary to the Internet own characteristics and traits that it has completely failed in providing sufficient revenues to all but the largest trafficked sites. Having large number of visitors to a Web site, just for the sake of sporting impressive statistics and to qualify as an advertisement destination has also become a serious liability.

The raising costs of bandwidth utilized by your Web site will be felt and charged to you by your hosting provider, and the need to upgrade your technology infrastructure to sustain swiftly those traffic loads maybe just an unneeded extra expense that many underestimate until it is too late.

You will have to work at having a Web site that is credible, accessible, well designed, fast-responding and reliable, regardless of its size and of the traffic it brings in.

Is it better to have a jewellery shop with only 5 paying clients per day or a mini-market with hundreds of generic and unqualified visitors per day, but only few actual buyers?

Once you have completely implemented what I will show you in this lesson, you will be ready and well prepared to start submitting your organization's Web site to the major search engines immediately.

**Strategy**

OK, I am ready to explain, in detail, how you can strategically organize your selected keyphrases on your Web site.

I will initially identify the 10 components of a Web page, which are essential in organizing and placing your selected keywords/keyphrases on your web pages.

As I go through each one these components, I will explain how to correctly place the appropriate keyphrases in each one of them.

From now on, I will refer to the components of your Web pages that will be used to place your keyphrases, as 'hot online content spots'.

"Hot online content spots" or HOOCS are search-engine sensitive areas of your Web pages, that need to be scientifically prepared to achieve prompt "indexing" by SEs and to reach higher ranking on search results pages for your selected keyphrases.

The ten "HOOCS", in order of importance and relevance to the SEs are:

1) Page Title *****
2) H1 Main Heading Title *****
3) Meta Tag Description ***
4) Other Page Headings (HTML Headings H2-H6) ***
5) Body Text ***
6) Hyperlinks **
7) ALT Tags **
8) IE Title Tags *
9) Comments *
10) Meta Tag Keywords *

Let's make it easy to remember all of these items.

Do you have a friend with a name that starts with the letter "T"? Maybe a guy named Tim? Well if not, pretend that you do. Think of him as being a sun lover in Hawaiian T-shirt and short colored beach pants who has a talent of remembering all the components of a Web page (including, where keywords and keyphrases should be placed).

The only problem is that this Tim loves the tropics. He is always on the beach. For you to find him, you have to fly to the most beautiful beaches of the world.

Next time you need to remember which Web page components you need to work on, just think of him and remember to:

"MEET TIM IN BALI"

This is the magic "mantra" to easily recall and memorize the ten HOOCS we have just learned about.

The letters in this "mantra" stand for:

MEET = Meta Tags Description and Keywords

TI = Title for the Page
M = Comments

I = H1 Main Heading Title
N = Other Page Headings (HTML Headings H2-H6)

B = Body Text
A = ALT Tags
L = Hyperlinks
I = IE Title Tags

Your objective is to seed the selected main keyphrases and keywords in all of the above places. You must do this with great care and attention in order not to trigger search engine spam alerts. These are nothing else but automatic and at times humanly monitored checks to prevent unscrupulous marketers from unethically overstuffing their HOOCS with selected keywords, or worst, with actual brand names of major competitors in order to actually steal true customers from them.

Thus, while trying to utilize them in a content-relevant and significant ways, we must avoid "keyword stuffing" any of the above HOOCS with excessive repetitions of keywords/keyphrases. If we do so we may considered as "spammers", and guilty of unfair and unethical online marketing approaches. As a consequence our Web site may be banned from being indexed and listed in one or more of the major search engines.

But let me introduce you now to the 10 HOOCS elements one by one, and allow me to advise you on how you are going to utilize and implement your selected keyphrases in each one of those ten hot online content spots (HOOCS).

**Action Steps**

1) Page Title
2) H1 Main Heading Title
3) Meta Tag Description
4) Other Page Headings (HTML Headings H2-H6)
5) Body Text
6) Hyperlinks
7) ALT Tags
8) IE Title Tags
9) Comments
10) Meta Tag Keywords

1) Page Title

Many people get confused about what is intended by "Page Title".

Let me clarify once and for all this simple mystery, as it is an ambiguous situation. If you pay close attention, you will notice that each Web page you visit on the Internet has two titles. Take for example: http://www.faa.uiuc.edu/
What do you think is the Page Title of this Web page?
It would be natural to say "College of Fine and Applied Arts".
But that is not the "Page Title".

Look up in the blue bar at the top of your browser window.

It says: "Index - ...". That is the real Page Title and, of course, it can be used in much better ways than this. See for example http://www.marketing-of-training.com/ beunique.htm

So yes, when looking at any Web page in your preferred browser, the Page Title is the one appearing inside the top blue bar of your browser window.

The goal when preparing Page Titles is to create appropriate and highly focussed and well crafted titles, which must contain within themselves all of the key information relating to the actual content on your Web Page.

Page Titles can be from 6-8 to 20 or more words long. In a standard browser only the first 95 characters or so(IE) are actually displayed. In Google results pages only the first 55 characters of the Page Title are actually displayed. The above data do not stand to mean that therefore Page Titles should be limited to a maximum of 50-95 characters (8-10 words) but rather that by taking into consideration these factors, can certainly affect your ability to convert potential customers in real ones. In fact, while the search engine crawlers can indeed read Page Titles longer than 10 words , Web users searching on Google will be able to see only the first 55 characters utilized in it. This in turn will affect the likelihood of their clicking on your page depending on how well the keywords they are searching for have been placed in the "visible" part of your Web Page Title.

Many long-time and experienced Internet marketers would suggest that the goal in crafting high quality Page Titles is to entice searchers to click on your page based on what solution is prompted through them.

*How to change your Web Page Title*

The "Page Title" is displayed in the blue bar at the top of your Web pages and is coded within your Web page HTML. Most Web publishing software allows you to easily change the Page Title to whatever you deem appropriate.

If you wish to do this manually, you need to resort to a little technical editing. Once you have opened your Web page (.htm) in Notepad or in any other text editor, place the new Page Title at the top of the Web page between the tags <Title> and </Title>.

I am providing a short step-by-step tutorial on how to do this in the following paragraphs.

As mentioned earlier, it is important to remember that the Page Title is read by all search engines. It is displayed as the title for your Web page resource in most search engine results pages.

Here are some rules to follow when writing Page Titles:

a) Within a Page Title, do not first write the name of your Web site or of your organization. Your first priority is to insert a description of what the page is about, what issues it targets, and what problems it can solve.

b) As much as possible eliminate all filler words as "and", "the", "for", etc.

c) Describe your content with clear and engaging titles. By doing so, you will better gain relevant readers to your Web page.

d) Make sure your Page Title(s) include at least one keyword or keyphrase that reflects the knowledge/product/service/solution/need online searchers likely will use in their query when utilizing one of the major search engines. This is absolutely vital.

-----------------------------------------------------------
To modify the Page Title is very simple.

If you utilize a text based editor to edit your HTML pages:

1) Open the selected Web page inside Notepad or other text editor.

2) Locate the tag labelled <Title> at the beginning of the HTML code. You will notice that the tag is present twice, and that it surrounds your present, Page Title text: e.g. <Title> This is the page title </Title>

3) Type within the two <Title> tags your new title and delete the old one.

4) Save your .htm file

5) Open up the same file inside your preferred browser and see if the title gets properly displayed.

If you utilize FrontPage:

1) Open the page of which you want to modify the title.

2) Go to the File menu.

3) Select Properties.

4) Edit the Title field, by replacing the old title with a new one.

5) Click OK.

6) Save your page.

In any case, if you have never done this before, ask your technical assistant/Webmaster for assistance or take the time to go and read one the following brief tutorials:
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tut/ tut1.html
http://www.cwru.edu/help/introHTML/ TCh2.html

or, better yet, go to:
http://www.davesite.com/webstation/ html/chap01.shtml
and scroll down to the bottom of the Web page.

Find an input box in which you can start practicing how easy it is to change the Page Title of a Web page. Simply follow the instructions that immediately precede the input box and you will be coding HTML in moments.
-----------------------------------------------------------

2) H1 Main Heading Title

The "Headings 1" tag or 'H1' represents the most important heading on your Web page. It is employed to place a benefit- laden title at the beginning of your content. Some search engines give a higher ranking to Web sites that utilize their keyphrases in the H1 tag.

Your H1 Title should be the most important title on your web page. This title should clearly state what this page has to offer. As well, it should describe what solution or specific problem-solver know-how is provided on this page. Make this title very detailed and phrase it in such a way that your readers/visitors immediately understand whether it meets their needs and desires.

My advice is to implement a solid H1 tag title on each of your Web pages, giving a thoughtful use of the words and keyphrases for each. Search engines place a higher value on this specific component in comparison to the other HOOCS. So make sure you do this well.

3) Meta Tag Description

I have extracted the following information from the Dublin Core Metadata resource page (see bottom of this lesson for reference):

Element "Description": An account of the content of the resource. Description may include but is not limited to: an abstract, table of contents, reference to a graphical representation of content or a free-text account of the content.

Guidelines for creation of content for the Meta Tag Description: Since the description field is a potentially rich source of indexable vocabulary, care should be taken to provide this element when possible.

Descriptive information can be taken from the item itself, if there is no abstract or other structured description available.

(...) Normally, Description should be limited to a few brief sentences.

*How to edit and create an effective Meta Tag Description*

To do this well, I would like you to read a very brief and clear tutorial that can clarify the meaning of metatags and the reasons why they are so important for marketing your training courses online.

Go and read this now: "The Basics Of Meta Tags" at
http://keywordwizard.com/metatag.html

http://webdesign.about.com/cs/ metatagsbasics/

Done? Then you are now ready to personally tackle the Meta Tag Description.

We now need to give the search engines that read meta tags (not all of them do) the description of the page that we want to have displayed when your page comes up in a search. Don't make the description too long. Search engines will only display a limited amount of text (generally between 20 and 40 words).

Your goal here is to write two or three sentences that include your main keyphrases and keywords. Always remember that this description is, in most cases, the one displayed right below each Web page title found in the search engine results page.

Write phrases that may provide a solution or a resource to a specific set of problems. For example: <Everything you need to learn about marketing of training online>

Make sure that you utilize keyphrases and keywords in a way that fits well in the context of your description. Do not use marketing hype to promote it. People want immediate solutions and facts. Provide them with those right from the start.

Eliminate as many "filler" words as needed (such as: and, the, a, an, name of the company, etc.) and give emphasis to the important words and the keywords through which customers will be able to find you.

----------------------------------------------------------

If you utilize a text based editor to edit your HTML pages:

1) Open the selected Web page inside Notepad or other text editor.

2) Locate at the beginning of the HTML code the tags labelled <head> and </head>.

3) Insert in between those two tags the following code as is, and replace my ALL CAPS TEXT with your own description, as outlined above:
<META Name="description" Content="HERE YOU ARE GOING TO WRITE YOUR OWN DESCRIPTION - UP TO 200 WORDS MAX.">

4) Save your html file

If you utilize FrontPage:

1) Open the page of which you want to modify the H1 title.

2) Locate at the beginning of the HTML code the tags labeled <head> and </head>.

3) Insert in between those two tags the following code as is, and replace my ALL CAPS TEXT with your own description, as outlined above:
<META Name="description" Content="HERE YOU ARE GOING TO WRITE YOUR OWN DESCRIPTION - UP TO 200 WORDS MAX.">

4) Save your html file
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Now, see what the search engines will see. Here is a little known online service that can give you immediate insight on what search engines will make of your Page Title and Description Meta Tag.

Go to:
http://www.anybrowser.com/ EngineView.html
and type the URL address of the page you have just updated. (If you do not have yet such a page, try with just anyone Web page).

You will see what most of the major search engines will see when they access your Web page. By utilizing this free online service, you are able to see what your listing title and probable description will be for most search engine results pages. See for yourself and tune your key HOOCS with it.

Your goal here is to adjust your Page Title and your Description Meta Tag until you get your site to be displayed with a title and a description that COMPLEMENT and REINFORCE each other. Do not make them replicas of each other.

*Creating Meta Tags automatically*

Thanks to technology and new innovations, you do not need to do META TAGS by hand. I have discovered a number of tools that can help you do this in a professional, reliable and automated way. One of the best ones I know and that I have used myself is JimTools MetaTag Generator.

You can access Jim Wilson's great FREE tool at:
http://www.jimtools.com and by clicking on the "HTML" section in the main navigation bar. Once on the page entitled "HTML Toolkit" scroll down to the 13th tool listed there. It is called "Generate basic or extended Meta Tags. - Tutorial".

Click on "Basic" and you will get a very simple and easy form to fill in. The fields required are your page title, description and main keywords. The tool will automatically generate all the Meta Tag codes needed in your Web Page and will spit them out to you at no cost.

Great! In one step, you can create your Page Title, Description Meta Tag and Keywords Meta Tag, with the complete HTML code needed and ready to be used.

Thereafter, you can just copy and paste that HTML code into the <head> section of your Web page and it's done!

Another easy and simple service that will generate your Web page Description and Keyword Meta Tags is at:
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/956
This one is also FREE.

4) Other Page Headings (HTML Headings H2-H6)

There are 6 more levels of headings that can be utilized on a Web page. All the titles utilized on your organization Web pages are important in creating a consistent theme.

The advice is to:

a) Have many sub-titles in your content. They help usability as well the overall keyword relevance of your pages.

b) Utilize H2, H3 and the other H tags to make these titles stand out more than the standard body content to search engines spiders.

c) Place carefully selected keyphrases and keywords in each one of them.

5) Body Text - First 100-200 words in the content

The first text block of any Web page is critical as well. In the first 200 words or so, the core proposition, benefits and unique offer you are making to prospect customers should be made clear.

Consider it the equivalent of the "Abstract" in an academic paper.

Keep in mind though, that differently from academic papers which may prefer to use ONLY technical jargon or industry- specific terminology, you should ALSO attempt to write content utilizing typical words and phrases that a more general target audience will likely use in their search queries.

Obvious but nevertheless mostly unnoticed, by giving your target audience exactly what they are searching for via a search engine query, you are not only providing them with a useful solution to their need, but you are also adding value, relevancy and credibility to the search engines themselves.

In my opinion, you should not only focus, as most online marketers recommend, on the initial 200 words, but also on the remaining content of your Web page. The richer, more focussed and on-theme your content will be, the better your page will rank on major search engines for queries on that specific topic.

6) Hyperlinks

The <A HREF> tag is used in HTML coding to create a link to another Web page.

You may or may not be aware of the fact that when you have a word or piece of text that "links" to another web page on your Web site or elsewhere, you are using an <A HREF> tag.

Each use of this tag makes an identifiable word(s) in your web page text to become an underlined and colored link unless your Web page is controlled by style sheets that command a different look.

While links to other web pages or Web sites have no direct effect on your ability to be indexed and ranked in search engine results pages, links play a very important indirect role in determining the "link popularity" of a Web page.

Link popularity measure the number of Web links pointing to a specific Web page. The more Web sites and pages on the Internet link to one of your specific pages, the higher the "link popularity" of your page. Link popularity is frequently factored inside search engine ranking algorithms and does play a major role in determining your ranking among similar competitors on search engine page results.

Your effort in this direction should be therefore one of carefully casting your "votes", or links to other sites while reinforcing your own by strengthening intralinks within your Web site(s) and promoting link partnerships with relevant and credible Web sites.

Of highest importance for incoming links from other Web pages on your site or from external Web sites, is the use of fitting keywords and keyphrases in the very text that links to your selected Web page. In simple terms, a link coming from another site where the link is labelled with the words that are relevant to your specific keyword/keyphrases on your destination page are much more valuable than links pointing to your page in a generic way.

Your page will be ranked higher if external hyperlinks coming from other Web sites contain text that is highly descriptive and relevant to the knowledge-niche or content-theme you are serving on your destination Web page.

In essence, hyperlinks can significantly affect the value and ranking given by a search engine to a Web page though they act mostly in an indirect way. Hyperlinks are seen by search engines as "credibility votes" cast by Web sites in favour of content relevant pages. This is especially true when these hyperlinks contain relevant words or keyphrases to Web sites related to the same overall theme/topic.

My advice is to fully leverage these hyperlinks both ways. One by being highly selective of who you link to and in which way you label your text links to them. Two by making sure you gradually develop an increasing number of appropriately worded links coming in from other Web pages and sites.

7) ALT Tags

Alt Tags are complementary HTML code tags that provide "ALT"ernative caption reading text for images and graphics placed on your Web pages.

ALT tags allow visitors with visual disabilities or Web surfers with their images turned off to "read" a description for any image placed on a Web page, and possibly a description for the link they provide.

In your day-to-day experience ALT tags are those HTML invisible components that generate a so-called "tooltip" to appear on top of any image on a Web page when you rest your mouse there for more than a second.

ALT tags should be used to further expand the number of places where relevant keywords and keyphrases can be placed in your Web page. Therefore, all instances of images, graphics, logos are an opportunity not only to appropriately label these elements for improved accessibility, but it is also a designated placeholder where to reinforce intelligently thematic keywords.

8) IE Title Tags

The Internet Explorer Title Tag is a Microsoft IE-specific tag.
It had at one time, been readable ONLY by Microsoft Internet Explorer browsers. THIS IS NOT TRUE ANYMORE. Also Netscape 6.x and above support this tag and allow for its correct implementation.

The Title Tag provides pop-up tooltip captioning for text links. To learn more about this, go to Jakob Nielsen's usability engineering Useit web site and access any specific content article like the one at:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ 20010902.html.

Now hold your mouse steady on top of any hyperlinked word. After less than a second, you should see a tooltip pop-up appear on top of that link, providing a clear description of where that linked word will take you.

What is the purpose of the Title Tag?

A tooltip eliminates the need for the Web visitor to follow the link by clicking it to discover what specific content would be found at the destination page. It allows therefore to provide some extra information about what it is to be found at the landing destination.

Most search engines read IE Title Tags.

Title Tags add to usability while being an extra, ethical HOOCS item to increase your keyword density for your overall theme.

9) Comments

Comments are the least reliable and most sneaky HOOCS component to work on. They do not guarantee major improvements to your Web site ranking on search engines but they can be helpful in particular situations.

Comments have originally been designed to provide HTML programmers with an opportunity to "comment" and "annotate" their code, without creating conflicts with the actual code to be interpreted by the browser. To do so, programmer's comments are included within a special tag set (<!- comment text here - ->). This way, the browser does not interpret them when a Web page is being displayed.

Let's say that you want to be indexed by a search engine that doesn't read standard Meta Tags. You can provide invisible text to feed the search engine spider. This can also possibly be used in place of the actual page description. To do this, you must place a short comment after the TITLE tag.

Your page should look like this:

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE> Your most appropriate Web Page Title here </TITLE>
<!- Here you can place text that complements your Page Title and that can act as a substitute for the Meta Tag Description in these situations where that Tag it is not used. -->
<HTML>
<HEAD>

Comments are rarely considered, but have the potential to be a useful HOOCS component. The content within them is sometimes indexed and used by search engines, either to contribute or complement the body content found elsewhere in the page. It is worth using this approach.

10) Keywords Meta Tag

The Keywords Meta Tag has lost much of its importance over the years. Originally, it was the most important HOOCS element to target in online marketing campaigns. Today, very few search engines read it, and even fewer give an attribute to the keywords placed in it.

The reason for this is that the Keywords Meta Tag has been overexploited by non ethical marketers to the point that many of the major search engines have had to give up reading and indexing its contents.

So my suggestion is this: use the Keyword Meta Tag, but without an excessive investment in time.

To manually implement the Keywords Meta Tag, you have to do the same steps we have taken for the Description Meta Tag. The only difference is that now you want to provide a simple list of keywords. Avoid repeating the same keywords/keyphrases more than two or three times.

Great. You are ready now to create a keyphrase-rich Web page that is fit to be indexed and well ranked by major search engines. The better you can refine and craft this task, the higher you will rank on search engines for whatever keyphrase you have selected.

*Lesson Review*

What you have learned in this lesson can be summarized as follows:

a) You have discovered about "hot online content spots" or HOOCS and their importance in search engines.

b) You have learned the importance of each HOOCS component and why.

c) You have learned how keyphrases can be specifically integrated into the 10 HOOCS.

You should now set some time aside in the next few days to put into practice what you have learned, and to apply your selected keyphrases into your Web page HOOCS.

Your Web pages are becoming closer and closer to being ready for submission to the major search engines and directories.

The only step missing is for you to prepare a set of descriptions to be used for the submission process.

These steps include creating bio-sketches or concise profiles of your Web site. Ideally, these should be written in different lengths (25 words, 50 words, 100 words, 200 words) in order to satisfy the different submission formats required by each major search engine and directory.