Effective-Internet-Promotion

Search engine optimization, better known as SEO, is one of the most important steps in creating, maintaining, and promoting an effective and popular website. Instead of spending thousands of dollars on advertising and promotional materials, you can optimize your site for search and enjoy the organic benefits of search engine traffic for free. What many website owners do not know, however, is all that goes into effective SEO that makes a real impact on page rankings.

Few aspects of SEO are more frequently overlooked than making sure that meta tags are used on every page. Meta tags, which are invisible to visitors, give the search engines specific identifiers for the page. Many site owners never implement them to full effect.

There are two kinds meta tags that have an especially high impact on SEO and how your pages rank. The first is the META KEYWORDS tag. This tag lists keywords for spiders, telling them what your website is all about. For example, if you visit www.nytimes.com and right click on the page, and then click on “View Source,” you will find a meta tag about half way down the first page reading META KEYWORDS. This tag will display a list of keywords starting with “New York Times, international news, daily newspaper, people, regional news, national news”, and so on. This list includes dozens of keywords that relate to the New York Times but also to newspapers in general.

Most search engines detect these keywords in page content too, but it can be helpful for you to include keywords that are especially low-density in text, such as odd spellings of names and places, related topics not specifically discussed on the page, and any other keywords you have trouble injecting into your content in a user-friendly way.

The second critical meta tag is the META DESCRIPTION tag. Search engines use this tag to display information about your site when in search results. Most search engines allow 160 characters in this meta tag. The META DESCRIPTION tag is also a place you may include keywords that boost your page rankings for targeted phrases.

There are many other meta tags, but these two tags are the most vital to SEO. Optimize your use of META KEYWORDS and META DESCRIPTION tags by making sure you do not cram them overfull of words that not related to your content. Always be aware that too many keywords here, like too many keywords in your content, will cause the search engines to mark your pages as spam.

Finally, always use different meta tags for every page. Changing the tags throughout your site makes it possible for the search engines to detect valuable differences in keywords on particular pages.

Justin Harrison is a leading Internet Marketing consultant responsible for the Internet Marketing strategies behind some of the biggest online brands including Amazon, BBC, MasterCard and many others.