Meta Tags

The <META> Tag is a little bit different than the Tags we have already covered. The <META> Tag is known as a one-sided Tag since it requires no Closing Tag whatsoever.
Let's look at an example of how the <META> Tag is used:
<HEAD>
<TITLE> HTML Clinic - HTML Help For All </TITLE>
<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="html,help,tag,clinic,free,table,form,code,">
<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="Top-Rated HTML Resource on the Web">
</HEAD>
ALL of the <META> Tags are entered between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> Tag set. The order you put them in is not important. Enter at least these two meta tags on each page.

The Meta Tag Attributes

The Attribute and Value entries work differently in Meta Tags than in other HTML Tags:NAME=
This Attribute only serves to give the Meta Tag an identifying name. In the example, you will notice I have used two of the most common Names, "KEYWORDS" and "DESCRIPTION".
CONTENT=
All this Attribute does is define what Content is to be associated with the Name you defined in theNAME= portion of the Meta Tag.
So, now, if you look at the example above you can see I have defined my first Meta Tag as the"Keywords" Meta Tag and have included a set of keywords (with a comma after each keyword) as the Content for that individual Meta Tag.
The second Meta Tag I have defined as the "Description" Meta Tag and I have included a short, detailed description of my site's highlights as the Content of that Meta Tag.

Other Commonly Used Meta Tags

<META NAME="AUTHOR" CONTENT="Your Name Here">
This tag lets you define who wrote your web page. You can use your real name, online name. or the name of your company. For example: "Bravenet Dave"<META NAME="COPYRIGHT" CONTENT="Enter Year And Company Name Here">
This tag allows you to define when your page was created. As the writer of your page you hold the copyright to the material on it. This does not allow you to claim the copyright on other people's works even if they appear on your page.
<META NAME="CONTACT_ADDR" CONTENT="Your Email Address Here">
This tag allows you to define the email address people should use to get in touch with you. For example: "webmaster@htmlclinic.com".
<META NAME="RATING" CONTENT="Add Your Rating Here">
What audience is your site geared towards? Possible values: "GENERAL", "14 YEARS", "MATURE", or"RESTRICTED".
<META NAME="ROBOT" CONTENT="Enter The Value Here">
Do you want search engines to index other pages on your site? When a search engine spider visits your page it will most likely try to follow your links and index every page it encounters.
Possible values:
"ALL"
This will tell a search engine spider to follow ALL the links on your web page and index everything it finds.
"NOINDEX"
This will tell a search engine NOT to index this page at all, but it can follow any links on the page.
"NOFOLLOW"
This will tell the search engine spider to index this page, but NOT to follow any links on this page.
"NONE"
This will tell the search engine NOT to index or follow any links on this page.
<META NAME="REVISIT-AFTER" CONTENT="Enter Value Here">
This tag lets you tell a visiting search engine spider when to come back and index the site again. Possible values can be any amount of time you want: "10 days", "2 months" "1 week" or whatever.
<META HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" CONTENT="2;URL=http://www.server.com/page.html">
You can use this tag to set up a redirection to another page. You can send your visitors to a different specific page by including this tag.
In the value portion of the CONTENT= attribute put in the number of seconds to pause, followed by a semi-colon, then type URL= and then add the address of the page you want the visitor to go to, just like this:
"2; URL=http://www.server.com/page.html".
So, after 2 seconds I would be whisked away to http://www.server.com/page.html.

Meta Tags: why you should use them

When you submit your site to a Search Engine, it sends a little program called a spider to visit your site and gather information about your site.The spider will take certain bits of information from your coding to determine what each page is about, and where and how it should be displayed to a person using the Search Engine. Most Search Engines will use your Meta Tag defined keywords and description to perform this task.
It is important to make sure that the keywords you use are relevant to your page. It is also VERY BAD to repeat any keyword more than 3 or 4 times. Search Engines will view this as an attempt toSPAM your keywords and probably drop your page altogether from the Search Engine listings.

SEO tips - E-mail marketing

E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fund-raising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every e-mail sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail marketing. However, the term is usually used to refer to:

• sending e-mails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers, to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business,
• sending e-mails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately,
• adding advertisements to e-mails sent by other companies to their customers, and
• sending e-mails over the Internet, as e-mail did and does exist outside the Internet (e.g., network e-mail and FIDO).

Comparison to traditional mail

Advantages

E-mail marketing (on the Internet) is popular with companies for several reasons:

• An exact return on investment can be tracked ("track to basket") and has proven to be high when done properly. E-mail marketing is often reported as second only to search marketing as the most effective online marketing tactic.
• Advertisers can reach substantial numbers of e-mail subscribers who have opted in (i.e., consented) to receive e-mail communications on subjects of interest to them.
• Over half of Internet users check or send e-mail on a typical day.
• E-mail is popular with digital marketers, rising an estimated 15% in 2009 to £292m in the UK

Disadvantages

A report issued by the e-mail services company Return Path, as of mid-2008 e-mail deliverability is still an issue for legitimate marketers. According to the report, legitimate e-mail servers averaged a delivery rate of 56%; twenty percent of the messages were rejected, and eight percent were filtered.

Companies considering the use of an e-mail marketing program must make sure that their program does not violate spam laws such as the United States' Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM),[6] the European Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003, or their Internet service provider's acceptable use policy.

Legal requirements

In 2002 the European Union introduced the Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications. Article 13 of the Directive prohibits the use of email addresses for marketing purposes. The Directive establishes the opt-in regime, where unsolicited emails may be sent only with prior agreement of the recipient.

The directive has since been incorporated into the laws of member states. In the UK it is covered under the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 and applies to all organisations that send out marketing by some form of electronic communication.

In addition to satisfying legal requirements, e-mail service providers (ESPs) began to help customers establish and manage their own e-mail marketing campaigns. The service providers supply e-mail templates and general best practices, as well as methods for handling subscriptions and cancellations automatically. Some ESPs will provide insight/assistance with deliverability issues for major email providers. They also provide statistics pertaining to the number of messages received and opened, and whether the recipients clicked on any links within the messages.

The CAN-SPAM Act was updated with some new regulations including a no fee provision for opting out, further definition of "sender", post office or private mail boxes count as a "valid physical postal address" and definition of "person". These new provisions went into effect on July 7, 2008

Search engine optimization (SEO)

"Doing a good seo is crucial ... but the key is to offer quality content."

In general, users do not make much use of the lists of favorites or bookmarks browsers provide systems and rarely directly typed the URL of the page you wish to go, because he might not know it.

Given this dynamic, web positioning strategies are critical . Since on the other hand, after a search of less than 40% of Internet users reached the second page of results that provides a search engine, and only 10% check to the third. This is where it is clear the need to achieve visibility and to achieve this we need to think like search engines to better communicate with them.

Google, Yahoo, MSN and company order their results through mathematical algorithms that undergo analysis hundreds of factors. Each company uses a different formula and the idea is not decipher.

The answer lies in the SEO . SEO is the acronym for "search engine optimization (Search Engine Optimization) or" search engine optimizer "(Search Engine Optimizer), which gives us a series of clues and techniques to interpret the mode of operation search engines.

1. Content

What users see vs. what are the search engines. Users can watch and / or read the website but search engines can only read the programming code with which they are developed and, even today, still can not read them all equally, for example, Flash has recently joined Google results but can not be optimized as HTML.

Graphics, sounds and videos are part of a page that search engines can not decipher it is for this reason that the positioning work is based on HTML tags and text.

2. Indexability

This concept refers to the ownership of the page to be properly indexed by search engine robots, allowing access to all corners, facilitating navigation and showing all its contents clearly.

"The meta tags

The Meta Tags are code in the header is not visible on screen when displaying the page. There are several types of Meta-Tags and they do a description of the content and features we want that search engines take into account.

    * Meta Robots :         This tag is only necessary if you want that page is not indexed in search engines.

    * Meta Description :  This tag is important because it allows us to make a more profound than in the title, which we refer to the page content.

    * Meta Keywords :    Perhaps the most important, she put the key words through the schools want this page to be found on search engines. Any other Meta tag is not considered by most search engines, only for some very specialized. It is noteworthy that Meta tags are not a magic solution to position a site in search engines, you must use all the techniques to be successful.

 

In conclusion, the main goal HTML tags to keep in mind for a good positioning are:

- Title.

Before entering into any other theme or gimmick positioning is important to define the titles of our pages, which should make a brief reference to the content of the page to which you are assigning, taking care to include the most important word describe the page or section to which we refer.

- Description.

Individual short description or abstract of the document as a meta tag that summarizes in a brief and concise content of the document and that may appear below the title in the "SERP's (search results pages of search engines.)

- H1, H2, H3, ... Hn

Correspond to the holders of any websites, so that the text you include in this tag will be taken into account for the contents of the page. Its importance depends on the number that accompanies them, H1 being the most important and so on until H6. You should only use a single level page and not found much use beyond the H4.

"The relevance

Relevance is an important point, this means that any word used in the title and meta tags of the page in question should be included within the text content of the page. It is noteworthy that some practices are penalized by search engines such as using hidden text and word lists.

"The URL

You try to be as descriptive as possible and semantically also facilitate proper indexing of the document. As an example: www.nombreempresa.com / activity-main.html

To strengthen the content of the page and improve your position in search engines is important that labels view the URL above and have the same content.

»Photos

Are not read by search engines, but you can rename them or give them descriptive attributes to facilitate indexing. A picture of a cat whose name is "12345.jpg" is not very descriptive, but if you change it to "gato.jpg" and you're telling the search engines what is that picture. And you can add the ALT attribute, very important for accessibility of documents and for proper indexing, with a description of the photo, in this case ALT = "a gray cat," and that will also serve people with disabilities be aware of their visual content.

"The outgoing links

They are also an important factor in the confidence that generates a site. Always try to add value to the user through the content with outbound links. Since your users can not navigate all the available web pages: Convert your reference page with unique content and a number of resources that extend and complement the information.

"The map

Finally, your site should include a file sitemap.xml , a map of your site to facilitate proper indexing by search engines.

 

3. Keywords

One of the most crucial factors in the management of the natural results are the key words, as in any book we are informed of the contents of the page and to be text, are perfectly understood by search engines, you should avoid using text as: "Home Page", "Home," Name of the Institution. "Search engines are the main gateway to cyberspace. A person who wants to find a page on the Internet, usually done through a search engine.

All positioning campaign must begin with the analysis of the keywords or keywords for which you want to optimize the website. Keywords means those words such as "hotel" or strings of words such as "hotels in Barcelona, and your choice will depend on the content of your campaign goals, and finally, the target or target to which you want to address .

The SEO is roughly 4 points:

* Content. Basis of SEO, without content you have nothing to position . The aim is that the content created, has quality and is accessible and readable by search engines. You      can use SEO-Browser to view your site as you would a search engine.

* S.E.O. (search engine optimization)Keywords (keywords) . The basis for the classification of any form are the key words, for according to the words that we include on our site, we store the search engines. So choose the best keywords for your site is one of the great challenges of SEO . The typical procedure for choosing and finding keywords is that   once chosen the theme on which we write, we make an investigation of possible keywords, through research on the topic to see what kind of concepts and words are which      are more related to it and then brainstorm ideas related words (can be via a tool like Google for keywords ). Once you've identified several key words then check the      

frequency with which they are searched and choose according to your target market and existing competition for that keyword. It should be noted that the term " keyword "does not necessarily refer to a word and in most cases refers to phrases .

* Optimization. Once you have the list of keywords you're using should try to take the best advantage of optimizing your content using tags , as the title (title), headers (h1, h2, h3, ...) and description (mini-summary of your page.)

* Authority. The way you show the search engines that our site is relevant, is through the sites we link. Making other sites link to us is what is known as link building . In addition, since the content is not sold by itself is important to promote related sites, portals and social networks and eventually cultivate relationships with other bloggers and with your own readers, it is these that can help you promote you by word of mouth.

4 . Professional Services

Hiring an SEO is a very important decision that can improve your site and save time, but also risk damage to your reputation. Make sure to research the potential benefits and the damage that a solvent can cause little SEO on your site. Many SEOs and other agencies and consultants provide useful services for website owners, including:

    * Review the content and site structure.

    * Technical assistance in the development of web sites, for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, using JavaScript, etc.

    * Content Development.

    * Management online business development campaigns.

    * Keyword research.

    * SEO training.

    * Experience in specific sectors and geographic regions.

Advertise on Google does not influence the position in which your site appears in search results. Google never accepts money to include or rank sites in our search results, appear in organic search results is free.

There are free resources such as Google Webmaster Tools, the Webmaster Central blog and the official forum, which can provide a wealth of information about optimizing your site for organic search. You can find many of these free resources and information on paid search in Google Webmaster Central .

 

 

Blogger SEO

Blogger & Google Webmaster Tools, make for a great SEO team. A little known secret that GWT has buried deep inside it’s treasure chest of handy tools, is a feature that I’ve been very happy to find.
Have you ever wandered which of your own blog post was the highest rated on the Google SERP (Search Engine Results Page)? I’m about to show you a very cool feature, that will show all of your most popular blog post, & not only that, everyone can view their own highest ranking SERP results for FREE!
Let’s get started!
1) First thing we need is a blog (check)
2) Go to Google Webmaster Tools
3) Select your blog name from the list of your blogs/websites
4) Click on the link Your site on the web
5) Click on the link Top search queries
6) You should see a list of words/phrases. Go to the far right side of the screen & click on the link that reads Position (see screenshot below)

What you see in the above screenshot is the most popular search results from real people on the internet, searching for relevant information to this blog, from the last seven days.
Beneath the Position link, shows the real position for each group of search words, that the visitors to my site used to find this blog (soswitcher.blogspot.com).
Here is how I rank for these search strings in the past seven days:
1) google for free javascripts hosts
2) visible title code for blogger
As you can see I’m indeed number one in both of those search strings, for the last seven days. What’s better is, you can search for longer periods of time, example the screenshot below is for August.

The most interesting search I found, that just blew me away was one of the shortest search strings. The search string blogger change, shows I was number one in the month of August, but get this (here’s the good part) The search string blogger change has over 451,000,000 other pages, below my blog (I’m now 2nd place as of this post, still very happy).
All I can say is WOW!
Note:
Google Webmaster Tools takes a while to crawl your blogs pages, If you are new to GWT then you should follow my other blog post Better Google Sitemap when setting up new sitemaps for Google to crawl. The longer your involved with GWT the larger your list of SERP keywords will be.
Go check out your own Google Webmaster Tools, list of most popular search words, I think you will be very surprised at how well some of your blog post are ranking.
Lets hear how well your ranking. :)

Blogger – Better Google Sitemap

Blogger & Google Sitemaps will allow your Blogger blog to get indexed by the Google spider with very few  problems. Did you know that the Blogger code for the default sitemap, that you submit to Google Webmasters Tools only allows the first 26 pages of your blog to get indexed by the Google spider?
That’s right …
If you are using the default code as your sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools, your site is missing out, for every single page that is over the 26 page limit. So say I have 150 pages on my Blogger blog, the math says I’m missing out on the opportunity to allow the Google spider to crawl 124 additional Blogger pages, on my blog!
I’m ready for change …
I actually found out that I was allowing my Blogger blog to be short changed by the Google spider, on one of my other Blogger blogs, & this wasn’t only a few pages, it was a huge amount of pages, in fact my blog was over 400 pages long, & out of those 400 pages I was only allowing the Google spider to crawl 26 of my latest blog post.
Whooooa… STOP THE BUS!
The default sitemap code looks like this (see red/bold text below):
1) http://YOUR_BLOG_NAME_HERE.blogspot.com/atom.xml?orderby=updated
The code above is all good, as long as you have less than 27 blog post, but the fact is you’ll quickly find that you will with no doubt exceed that maximum limit at some point in your blog.
From all my research & trial & errors, on all my Blogger blogs for well over a year & a half, I’ve found the code below to be a better alternative to the default Blogger sitemap code. The new code will break the sitemap down into multiples of 100, so for every 100 pages on my blog, I need to tweak the sitemap code a little bit.
New sitemap code (Google spider crawls the first 100 blog post)
1) atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=100

So in the new sitemap code above, we start with the very first blog post (start-index=1) & now allow the Google spider to crawl to page 100 (max-results=100).


Say you have over 100 blog pages, what you need to do is submit additional sitemaps for the same blog at the Google Webmaster Tools website. As an example I have a Blogger blog that has over 400 pages, for that blog I have 4 sitemaps, that look like the code below.

1) atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=100


2) atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=100&max-results=100


3) atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=200&max-results=100


4) atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=300&max-results=100


Notice how each new sitemap starts at a higher start-index, by 100 blog post. So for the sitemaps I have, I’m covered for the first 400 blog post of my Blogger blog.

NOTE:
When you submit sitemaps to Google Webmaster Tools, for a Blogger blog. Google won’t crawl your Blogger Labels, that’s the reason why every page isn’t being crawled in the screenshot above.
This new sitemap code has greatly improved how Google crawls my blog, I went from having only the first 26 pages of my blog crawled to now having 324 pages crawled by the Google spider.
I have internal links hard coded into my template, on every blog page, so it’s important to me to allow Google to crawl as many pages as possible, as often as possible. I also have widgets that have text that changes often, that text also is picked up by the Google spider, which allows my blog to show a massive amount of relevant keywords, for my Blogger Blog.