13 February 2008
Geeky but good
OK - so I think we've established I'm a bit of a geek. I like sitting in front of my PC, testing websites on different operating systems, browsers and with different add-ons enabled.
I enjoy figuring out how to make my clients' websites appear above their competitors in search engines.
If my girlfriend stays away for a night or two, I leap at the chance of eating food that is high in MSG and low in nutrients. It also gives me the opportunity to avoid washing.
So, I am a geek.
But, I am not as geeky as the chap who writes this webcomic: http://xkcd.com/198/ and I kind of wish I was.
I enjoy figuring out how to make my clients' websites appear above their competitors in search engines.
If my girlfriend stays away for a night or two, I leap at the chance of eating food that is high in MSG and low in nutrients. It also gives me the opportunity to avoid washing.
So, I am a geek.
But, I am not as geeky as the chap who writes this webcomic: http://xkcd.com/198/ and I kind of wish I was.
Labels: Funnies
10 February 2008
What are meta tags?
This is a follow on from the post Does a blog make a good business website? I guess the other question we need to ask in addition to what are meta tags? is... how can they benefit my business?
Meta tags are the bits of a web page that you don't ordinarily see, but they are there hiding at the top of all web pages. Here's what a meta tag looks like:
The main meta tags you should concentrate on when you are considering launching your new website are:
Title (not a meta tag, but now is a good time to take a look at it)
Description
Robots
Keywords
The title appears in the blue bar at the top of your browser:
And along with the description, the title also appears in the search engine results:
So it's a good idea to have the search terms you'd like your page to be found for in both the title and the description.... There are no hard and fast rules governing what you can put in the title, but it's best to keep it simple and under 20 words. For the description, I try to keep to under 35 words. Different search engines will show different amounts of the title and description in their results pages so, make sure all your important information is in the first few words.
If your site is listed in the Open Directory Project or ODP (a human edited search engine, and your isn't listed yet, submit it NOW!) then Google, MSN & Yahoo! will not show your description in the search results but the description that ODP has written for you. You can override this with the robots tag. "Robots" is a catch all term for the automated browsers (or "search engine spiders", "crawlers") which follow all the links on the web to build up the index of web pages for their parent search engine.
Finally we come to the meta tag "keywords" - way back in the 1990's when the web was young, and search engines weren't as rich, rather than waste expensive resources on sending out their robots to read an entire page, the robots would read just the meta tags (including the keywords) for a kind of synopsis. The page would then be ranked according to the title and description and because there wasn't much info in here you could tell the robots what else existed on the page by giving it a list of "keywords". For this page the keywords might read something like:
Sadly, some people would stuff their keywords with hundreds of words hoping it would improve their ranking and even worse, some other naughty people used misleading keywords so that unsuspecting surfers might search for "spice girls" and arrive at a page showing pictures of ladies with no tops on. This wouldn't do, so search engines pretty much ignore keywords now and look at the title, description and actual 'on page' content to see what the page is about. I still use the keywords attribute myself, but keep it to 4 or 5 words per page. I'm not sure it has any real value, but if the keywords are accurate and brief, I'm confident it doesn't do any harm.
There are a few of final comments:
Keep your titles and descriptions meaningful and accurate, search engines like providing their users with accurate results. You will not achieve high rankings in the search engines if you over egg the pudding.
I know it's difficult but try to make sure you have a unique title and description for every page, to reflect the content on the page. This way all your pages are more likely to rank highly in the search results and you are more likely to be found by people who are looking for your products and/or services and who have never heard of you.
Need more help? Confused about this? Post a comment or contact the web consultant
Meta tags are the bits of a web page that you don't ordinarily see, but they are there hiding at the top of all web pages. Here's what a meta tag looks like:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html">This one would tell your browser to render the page as text. But that is soooooo tedious and nobody cares. So lets get to the useful stuff.... what you can do with your meta tags to make them improve your site's visibility in the search engines results pages.
The main meta tags you should concentrate on when you are considering launching your new website are:
Title (not a meta tag, but now is a good time to take a look at it)
Description
Robots
Keywords
The title appears in the blue bar at the top of your browser:
And along with the description, the title also appears in the search engine results:
So it's a good idea to have the search terms you'd like your page to be found for in both the title and the description.... There are no hard and fast rules governing what you can put in the title, but it's best to keep it simple and under 20 words. For the description, I try to keep to under 35 words. Different search engines will show different amounts of the title and description in their results pages so, make sure all your important information is in the first few words.
If your site is listed in the Open Directory Project or ODP (a human edited search engine, and your isn't listed yet, submit it NOW!) then Google, MSN & Yahoo! will not show your description in the search results but the description that ODP has written for you. You can override this with the robots tag. "Robots" is a catch all term for the automated browsers (or "search engine spiders", "crawlers") which follow all the links on the web to build up the index of web pages for their parent search engine.
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOODP">tells the search engines to show your descriptions, not those which ODP has written on your behalf. You can also give the commands "NOFOLLOW" (tell robots not to follow links on this page) and "NOARCHIVE" (tells robots not to include this page in the index), but really this should be done in a separate file called robots.txt, which all robots look for to get instructions when they arrive at a website.
Finally we come to the meta tag "keywords" - way back in the 1990's when the web was young, and search engines weren't as rich, rather than waste expensive resources on sending out their robots to read an entire page, the robots would read just the meta tags (including the keywords) for a kind of synopsis. The page would then be ranked according to the title and description and because there wasn't much info in here you could tell the robots what else existed on the page by giving it a list of "keywords". For this page the keywords might read something like:
<meta name="KEYWORDS" content="search marketing tips business uk">
Sadly, some people would stuff their keywords with hundreds of words hoping it would improve their ranking and even worse, some other naughty people used misleading keywords so that unsuspecting surfers might search for "spice girls" and arrive at a page showing pictures of ladies with no tops on. This wouldn't do, so search engines pretty much ignore keywords now and look at the title, description and actual 'on page' content to see what the page is about. I still use the keywords attribute myself, but keep it to 4 or 5 words per page. I'm not sure it has any real value, but if the keywords are accurate and brief, I'm confident it doesn't do any harm.
There are a few of final comments:
Keep your titles and descriptions meaningful and accurate, search engines like providing their users with accurate results. You will not achieve high rankings in the search engines if you over egg the pudding.
I know it's difficult but try to make sure you have a unique title and description for every page, to reflect the content on the page. This way all your pages are more likely to rank highly in the search results and you are more likely to be found by people who are looking for your products and/or services and who have never heard of you.
Need more help? Confused about this? Post a comment or contact the web consultant
Labels: better search engine rankings
08 February 2008
Friday night is research night
Wow, my life is so rich and full. All of my meetings overran this week and consequently I'm only just getting the work that I should have finished on Wednesday done now. And it's Friday night.
Never mind, in a little while I'll settle down with a nice Rioja and read this really useful article.
Sometimes, I agree with people when they call me a geek. Other times I just weep into my keyboard. No wonder my girlfriend has started to work increasingly late increasingly often....
Never mind, in a little while I'll settle down with a nice Rioja and read this really useful article.
Sometimes, I agree with people when they call me a geek. Other times I just weep into my keyboard. No wonder my girlfriend has started to work increasingly late increasingly often....
Labels: rants
03 February 2008
Does a blog make a good business website?
Here's an extract from an email I received last week....
> I need some advice about how to create a website succesfully! at the moment
> I can't afford to get one up and running by a proffessional - and I don't
> think it's something you should skrimp on - as a website can be very
> profitable to a business if done correctly.
>
> currently i've created a wordepress blog - which is a mixture of industry
> info and my informatiom about the
> company i.e 'about us' 'services' 'fees' etc etc - I'm not sure if its ok to
> use a blog site like this - but I've tried to use it to the best of my
> ability.
>
> I'd really appreiate it if you could explain to me terms like 'meta tag',
> CSS, RSS feeds etc etc - as its completely over my head!
Some good questions here, but I'll start by answering a question that wasn't really posed... Does a blog make a good business website?
Like many questions about doing business online, there's not really a definitive answer. What is right is what works for you. But, here's some considerations:
Using a blog in this way does make it difficult to optimise the site and it's pages for search engines, as the pages are built using templates provided by the blog provider (blogger.com, wordpress.com, etc).
Blog templates are designed for use by people of all levels of technical ability, and as such have a lot of bulky code built in to keep your web pages looking nice, and to allow you to apply your own house style. Now I mentioned "bulky code".
Simply put, "code" is the technical bit that holds the site together. The more efficient your use of code, the easier it is for search engines (and people with disabilities) to navigate your website and enjoy your content. Blogs can't use code as efficiently as a custom built site, as they have to cater for a colossal variety of styles, layouts, etc. This bulky code is just the sort of thing that makes it difficult for search engines to read and appreciate the value of your content.
It stands to reason that if your site is difficult for a search engine to read, and your competitor has a site with similar content that is easier for a search engine to read, your competitor's site will appear higher in the page rankings.
In addition to all the competitors in business you have to outperform, consider how many indirect competitors there are for your potential customer's attention.... news sites reporting on your industry, forums discussing products and services you sell, hobbyists who just love giving away your trade secrets.... It's easy for your site to be lost underneath this heap of 'competitive' sites.
There are however a number of blogs that perform fantastically in the search results of many search engines. How do they do this? Well, it will have a lot to do with their link popularity (see my explanations of link popularity) and, crucially, the amount of relevant content on their pages. So as getting hundreds of links to a brand new webiste is difficult, what you need if you're using a blog as the main website for your business is lots of content. Content is king!
When you see how much content is on the top performing blogs you'll see just how much content you need to compete with these chaps. It is likely to be at least 10 times as much as you're comfortable with, so to keep it easy to read, start with a compelling headline, and then a 5-15 word introduction to the information and give more and more detail as you get into your subject. Just like a newspaper article.
If you are using Worrdpress (I'm not, but I know many people do), make sure you click the button that shows the Advanced Toolbar (it's the button on the far right hand side of the menu that appears above the box where you type your content). Now you must use the format drop down menu to make the headline of your page 'Heading 1', the 5-15 word intro 'heading 2' and any subsequent headings 'heading 3', 'heading 4' and so on. This will show the Search Engines what the most important bits of your content are.
So it's worth having a section on your site that is a real blog, with compelling content to which people will want to place links on their sites, blogs and forum posts. Which will help your link popularity too!
Now, I know haven't answered the questions about Meta Tags, CSS & RSS yet, but I will this week, so watch this space kids!
Oh, and if I've been too confusing (people are increasingly referring to me as 'geeky') or you would like more info you can get in touch with me at The Web Consultancy or simply add a comment to this post using the link below.
> I need some advice about how to create a website succesfully! at the moment
> I can't afford to get one up and running by a proffessional - and I don't
> think it's something you should skrimp on - as a website can be very
> profitable to a business if done correctly.
>
> currently i've created a wordepress blog - which is a mixture of industry
> info and my informatiom about the
> company i.e 'about us' 'services' 'fees' etc etc - I'm not sure if its ok to
> use a blog site like this - but I've tried to use it to the best of my
> ability.
>
> I'd really appreiate it if you could explain to me terms like 'meta tag',
> CSS, RSS feeds etc etc - as its completely over my head!
Some good questions here, but I'll start by answering a question that wasn't really posed... Does a blog make a good business website?
Like many questions about doing business online, there's not really a definitive answer. What is right is what works for you. But, here's some considerations:
Using a blog in this way does make it difficult to optimise the site and it's pages for search engines, as the pages are built using templates provided by the blog provider (blogger.com, wordpress.com, etc).
Blog templates are designed for use by people of all levels of technical ability, and as such have a lot of bulky code built in to keep your web pages looking nice, and to allow you to apply your own house style. Now I mentioned "bulky code".
Simply put, "code" is the technical bit that holds the site together. The more efficient your use of code, the easier it is for search engines (and people with disabilities) to navigate your website and enjoy your content. Blogs can't use code as efficiently as a custom built site, as they have to cater for a colossal variety of styles, layouts, etc. This bulky code is just the sort of thing that makes it difficult for search engines to read and appreciate the value of your content.
It stands to reason that if your site is difficult for a search engine to read, and your competitor has a site with similar content that is easier for a search engine to read, your competitor's site will appear higher in the page rankings.
In addition to all the competitors in business you have to outperform, consider how many indirect competitors there are for your potential customer's attention.... news sites reporting on your industry, forums discussing products and services you sell, hobbyists who just love giving away your trade secrets.... It's easy for your site to be lost underneath this heap of 'competitive' sites.
There are however a number of blogs that perform fantastically in the search results of many search engines. How do they do this? Well, it will have a lot to do with their link popularity (see my explanations of link popularity) and, crucially, the amount of relevant content on their pages. So as getting hundreds of links to a brand new webiste is difficult, what you need if you're using a blog as the main website for your business is lots of content. Content is king!
When you see how much content is on the top performing blogs you'll see just how much content you need to compete with these chaps. It is likely to be at least 10 times as much as you're comfortable with, so to keep it easy to read, start with a compelling headline, and then a 5-15 word introduction to the information and give more and more detail as you get into your subject. Just like a newspaper article.
If you are using Worrdpress (I'm not, but I know many people do), make sure you click the button that shows the Advanced Toolbar (it's the button on the far right hand side of the menu that appears above the box where you type your content). Now you must use the format drop down menu to make the headline of your page 'Heading 1', the 5-15 word intro 'heading 2' and any subsequent headings 'heading 3', 'heading 4' and so on. This will show the Search Engines what the most important bits of your content are.
So it's worth having a section on your site that is a real blog, with compelling content to which people will want to place links on their sites, blogs and forum posts. Which will help your link popularity too!
Now, I know haven't answered the questions about Meta Tags, CSS & RSS yet, but I will this week, so watch this space kids!
Oh, and if I've been too confusing (people are increasingly referring to me as 'geeky') or you would like more info you can get in touch with me at The Web Consultancy or simply add a comment to this post using the link below.
Labels: better search engine rankings
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