HTML tags used in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become a critical component of any online marketing campaign. If possible, we highly recommend that clients begin developing their SEO strategy even BEFORE the first line of their website's HTML code is written! Keyword tags, page content, table structure, and internal & external website links will all have an impact on your site's ability to be found by, indexed in and located in popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo!.

Getting started: META Tags
META Tags are important for Search Engines, but they don't carry as much weight as they used to, due to abuse by unscrupulous web developers. The primary META tags that every page of your website should contain are:

Title
Example: <title>My HTML Page Title</title>
The title of the HTML page. This will be displayed in the browser window, and will be referenced when the page is bookmarked by the user.

Content Type
Example: <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
This tag is used to increased Search Engine friendliness.

Resource Type
Example: <META name="resource-type" content="document">
The only resource type that is currently in use is "document" This is the only tag that you need to put in for indexing purposes, but use of the others is a good idea.

Description
Example: <META name="description" content="a description of your page">
Depending on the search engine, this will be displayed along with the title of your page in an index. "content" could be a word, sentence or even paragraph to describe your page. Keep this reasonably short, concise and to the point.

Keywords
Example: <META name="keywords" content="a, list, of, keywords">
Choose whatever keywords you think are appropriate, separated by commas. Remember to include synonyms, Americanisms and so on. So, if you had a page on cars, you might want to include keywords such as car, cars, vehicles, automobiles and so on.

Simply adding META tags to your webpages is not enough! The CRITICAL aspect of META tags is to make sure that the words appearing in your description and keywords tags appear within the content of the page itself. For example, if your web page uses the keywords "shoes", but your website content is about "hats", then your page will potentially be viewed as abusive by search engines and ignored by them.

The next steps: Content Development, Optimization, Internal/External Linking, PPC Campaigns
META tags just scratch the surface of what SEO techniques are available for your website. SEO can be an ongoing development process, but the rewards for your business can be substantial. If you would like Modular Merchant to start working with your site to optimize your site's content and online marketing campaign, let us know. Your account manager can provide more details on the SEO options that are available.