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Classroom
8. Admit to Searchengines
You will recall in chapter 2 “Html-Basics” that every html-document consists of a head- and a body-section. In the head-section you can put stuff, that doesn´t need to be shown on the screen. This is the place were the so called meta-tags for the search engines go.
Many of the search engines and indexes will send robots to your website to check out what your site has to offer. The first thing they do is to check the meta-tags in the head-section of your site. This includes: Keywords, The subject of your site, a short description and so on.
Have a look at the example down below to see what you need to have as meta-tags:
...
<HEAD>
<TITLE>"Document Title"</TITLE>
<meta NAME="author" CONTENT="[Name of Author]">
<meta NAME="publisher" CONTENT="[Name of Publisher]">
<meta NAME="copyright" CONTENT="[Name of copyright owner]">
<meta NAME="description" CONTENT="[Description up to 180 signs, better is 130] ">
<meta NAME="keywords” CONTENT="[Keyword1, keyword2, keyword3, ... no limit] ">
<meta NAME="page-topic" CONTENT="[What is the page about?]">
<meta NAME="page-type" CONTENT="[Short description, like the second headline]">
<meta NAME="audience" CONTENT="[Target group]">
<meta NAME="robots" CONTENT="index, follow">[“index, follow” will tell the search robot to index the sites behind the start page, too.]
</HEAD>
<BODY>
...
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Put the meta tags in the head of every html-page on your website. Take your time to think about by which keywords the targeted group will search the Internet for your website. Put the keywords with the input (and the brain) of several people together.
Have a look at the head-section of the UK-ICYE-Website to see a good example:
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<HEAD>
<TITLE>"Volunteer abroad with Inter Cultural Youth Exchange UK (ICYE) "</TITLE>
<meta name="description" content="home page of Inter Cultural Youth Exchange (ICYE) UK, a charity that sends volunteers to work with communities overseas in social and welfare placements abroad for one year or six months">
<meta name="keywords" content=" ICYE, ICYE, Volunteering, volunteer, vol, gap year, gap, abroad, disability, teaching, youth, young, help, assist, evs, icye, icye-uk, voluntary work, voluntary, travel, abroad, social, ICYE, Inter-Cultural Youth Exchange, placement, international, volunteers, charity">
<meta name="Author" content="benjamin_rogers@totalise.co.uk">
</HEAD>
<BODY>
...
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To choose the right keywords to get your targeted audience to your website is a science for itself. Check search engines with "your keywords" to see what websites will be shown. Have then a look at the source code of these websites. What meta-tags do they have, that brought them a higher ranking in the search engine than your website got?
Every search engine pays attention to different things. Some do have a deeper look at your headlines or at your Title and so on. You can´t tell for sure what kind of websites get the highest rankings.
For some tricks on how to find the ultimate meta-tags check out http://www.freepromote.com/ .
When you put the right meta-tags into your whole website, the next step is to submit your site to search engines. Some search engines will find your site by them self, but others don´t. So you need to submit it manually.
You can click on every site of every search engine you know, but easy is it to use a service that will register you to a load of sites at once. One of these services is Addme.com (http://www.addme.com/submission.htm). This service will admit your site to 25 search engines and indexes for free.
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