Optimizing Tags for Search Engines

First let me say that trying to get a top slot on a search engine for most sites is like playing the lotto. You can constantly be analyzing your tags, updating your content, and adjusting in hopes that it helps...but it may not.

You need the following tags on each page: Title, Keywords, and Description.

For each page I write a title that is specific to the content that is on that page. Then I copy the content to Word and cull through the content to reduce the page to keywords that are on that page. I also try to come up with an accurate description based on the content of the page, usually content that is found in the first two paragraphs of the page. The important thing to keep in mind is that search engines want to see the information within the three tags also reflected in the actual content of the page.

I place the stylesheet link and any javascripts after the title, keywords, and description tags. It's better to link to the stylesheet and any scripts so that the spiders of the search enginge can get right to the content. Effective use of H tags helps place importance as well as bolding items or keywords on the page. It's not to say you should go overboard, you still want your users to be able to read the content but with selective highlighting, you can place importance on ideas or keywords that you want the search engines (and your users) to pick up on.

What I usually do for my clients is start a spreadsheet with columns defined for the title, keywords, and description tags. This way, the client has a place where they can see what is on each page at a glance and make adjustments within the spreadsheet and copy those adjustments to the appropriate tag on the web page. Additionally, the spreadsheet allows the client to record when they've submitted a page to a search engine and use that as a metric for seeing how quickly the site gets added and to help with analyzing site traffic with a web trending application.