The WAHM Shack Blog

by Terry Detty

It is best to plot out how you’ll use meta tags on a particular page before even writing the content for the page. Lots of people will write the content of the page and then try to sprinkle in keywords in the meta tags. This is an ineffective way of doing things, as it usually makes your page confusing to visitors.Before writing content, take a minute to pick out 3-4 primary keywords. Then take another minute to write phrases from those words. Once you’ve done that, you can begin writing your content around the keywords.

How do I select proper keywords to enter into the meta tags? This is an excellent question. Really, there are two main rules of thumb for selecting proper keywords.

#1: Base your keywords off of the content of your site.

For instance, if you are running a digital photography site, your keywords could be digital, photographs, photography etc. You’ll want to steer clear of silly keywords that don’t relate to your site. These would include keywords completely irrelevant to your site.

#2: Make sure your keywords can flow naturally throughout the content of your site. Try to pick words that you can easily incorporate into the content of your site and that make sense. You must remember that actual people are reading your site—the content(and keywords) MUST make sense to not only search engines, but also to the people who visit your site. Thus, the keywords you choose must fit the content of your site perfectly.

How do I write a good description tag?

What description tags essentially do is briefly inform the search bot/web crawler what a site is about. Therefore, to write a good description tag, you must be able to write a good, brief description of what your site is about. It is important to note that you are limited to 200 characters or less in the description tag so be as concise as possible.

Let’s use the photography example again. Your site is based on digital photography. So your description tag should say that your site is related to digital photography. Example description tag: “Digital photography site, digital photos, buy digital photos, print digital photos”.

The search engine bot/web crawler will see this and will place the site in relevant search results. So if someone searches for digital photos, they should see your site somewhere on the list.

The same principle can be applied to any and every site. Good description tags are as simple as a good, concise description of what your site is about.

How to use the Title tag Effectively.

There are some misconceptions about Title tags. People have said in the past(and some still do today) that a good, effective Title tag consists of keywords. However, this is just not true. Every good title tag consists of two things—the name of the site and a brief description of what is on the site.

One thing to keep in mind is that the Title tag is also the title of your listing in any search engine. Why would you want your title listing to consist of keywords? It won’t help your site at all—it will actually hurt it because people are less likely to take the site seriously due to silly keywords. Another thing worth noting is that the Title tag should never be more than 80 characters. Generally speaking, the briefer the Title tag is, the better. So strive to be concise!

So what is a good, effective Title tag? Well, a good, effective Title tag should first have the name of your web site (so if it’s www. digitalphotography.com it should be “Digital Photography”) and then a short description of the site. In this example, you could put “Digital Photography – Buy and Print Digital Photos Here”. This is both an accurate and effective Title tag for this particular site. Apply this principle to your site and you will have a good and effective Title tag.

Meta tags and titles are incredibly useful to your site. Master the above techniques and you will be able to create effective meta tags and titles that will help your site earn a higher search engine ranking and more visitors!

Terry Detty, 42 years old, finds email marketing and SEO software his passion. In addition to marketing, he enjoys reading and occasionally goes out for a short walk. His latest interest is a new time and attendance program he’s been using.

Article Source: The WAHM Shack Article Directory

THIS ARTICLE is Free for reprint only if it remains in its entirety, the Author’s Resource Box AND our Article Source Credit Url are included, and ALL links remain intact.

by Terry Detty

Getting your site listed in search engines and directories is an important part of building a successful site. Most people tend to think of search directories and engines as one in the same. However, they are actually both quite different. The only similarity between the two, in fact, is that they both serve the same purpose: to help people find web sites of interest to themSearch Engines: By far the most popular search engine around is Google. Other search engines include Lorming, Inktomi, AltaVista, AlltheWeb, and MSN.

Directories: Probably the most popular example of a directory is Yahoo. Other directories include Open Directory Project (dmoz.org) and Gimpsy.

The Differences between Search Engines and Directories

Difference #1: Search engines are run by robots; directories are run by human editors

The most notable difference between search engines and directories is that search engines aren’t updated by human editors like directories are. Instead, search engines are updated bi-monthly or monthly by robots—spiders and crawlers. What are spiders and crawlers? They are programs written by programmers at a particular search engine that basically locate a page, browse it, and then report whatever it finds back to the search engine’s database. What is found is then listed on the search engine.

Directories, on the other hand, are completely updated by human editors. What usually happens is that a person submits their site to the directory and then the editor will visit the site and see whether or not it is worthy of being listed in the directory. If it is, it will be grouped with other relevant sites in the directory. If not, it won’t be listed at all. Directories are typically harder to get listed in than search engines are for this reason. Human editors won’t allow in unworthy sites; search engine bots will. Directories are usually updated very frequently by the editors.

Difference #2: Search engines are free to get listed in; some directories are not. Many directories charge money for each submission. Search engines never charge a dime because their bots are solely responsible for listing web sites. There are, however, free directories which you can submit your site to.

Difference #3: Search engines are more popular and more used. People want convenience. Search engines offer this. All people have to do is type in a keyword into the search engine and relevant sites come up. Those who use directories have to go through the hassle of going through categories and sub-categories. This takes time and patience, both things that many busy people just don’t have.

Difference #4: Directories have listings grouped together by topic; search engines can sometimes be disorganized. When someone visits a directory, all they have to do is choose a category that interests them. Then, all the sites are relevant to that category will come up on the page. While search engines are usually effective, unrelated listings can sometimes come up in a search for a particular thing. There’s nothing worse than doing a search for cars and having an unrelated listing for cats come up. Unfortunately, this is occasionally the case with search engines because they are updated by robots, not humans.

Why are Search engines and Directories important to your site? There are a few reasons for why both are important to your site’s traffic. The most obvious reason is that the more you are listed, the more likely it is people will visit your site. If people see your site in both search engines and directories, they are more likely to visit it than if they just saw it in a search engine.

Even though directories aren’t as popular now, they are still well-used by people because they neatly group together sites in a particular category. So if you run an online web design business and are listed in the web design category of the directory, everyone who looks for web design in that directory will see your site.

Search engines are also important to your site because they will show your site if a particular keyword(s) is typed into the engine. If your site is listed in both directories and search engines, you will have more traffic than if your site were listed in one or the other.

Be sure to do whatever it takes to ensure that your site gets listed in both and you will reap the benefits.

Search engine bots and easy directory submission make it quick and painless for your site to get maximum exposure from both of these wonderful tools. So go ahead and take the steps necessary to get listed!

Terry Detty, 42 years old, finds email marketing and SEO software his passion. In addition to marketing, he enjoys reading and occasionally goes out for a short walk. His latest interest is a new time and attendance program he’s been using.

Article Source: The WAHM Shack Article Directory

THIS ARTICLE is Free for reprint only if it remains in its entirety, the Author’s Resource Box AND our Article Source Credit Url are included, and ALL links remain intact.