Writing a search engine friendly webpage - Part 1 (of 2)

Seanny

Writing a page for your website. What should I call it? How can I make it more search engine friendly? What is meant by the 'Title of the page'? the 'keywords'? and the 'Page Description'? I hope to answer all these questions, if I dont answer your particular query, let me know. This thread is aimed primarily at those geeks who have their own website, their own webspace and who have some knowledge of how to edit their site. You may be able to use this info if you have a freely hosted website with the likes of Freewebs or Tripod, but normally you will have restrictions as to what you can and cannot do with the code on your page, thereby preventing you from implementing some or all of the suggestions below.

Scenario: You're a very experienced nail technician who specialises in Nail Art, you have been offering your services to lots of students through training courses over the years, and now you'd like to advertise your services to a wider audience. Problem: you need to make a new page for your website to advertise your nail art training class. We're going to use the Nail Art Training page from Liberty Nail Design for demo purposes, but regardless of the website in question, the same rules and guidelines apply to all sites, regardless of whether they are selling gold thread, Mackerel & Herring, heated rollers or..... erm, nail art training.

I'll go through the page section by section. Before you even type a letter, you should give some consideration to what you are going to call the page, I'm talking about the actual filename. For example, if your page is about nail art training, it is hugely beneficial (all other things being equal) to name your page descriptively, ie, nail-art-training.html as opposed to page6.html. Ok, you've made your page and called it airbrushed-nail-training-in-dublin.html Take note that there are no spaces in between the words, use hyphens or underscores when saving the page for the first time, otherwise you'll be left with an ugly '20%' seperating the words when you view the page online.

The first thing to consider once the page has been saved is the title. The text that we enter as the title is what will show up in the top of the browser window and it is of huge importance to the search engines. Take note that the title is a different kettle of fish to the filename, they can in fact be completely different if you so wish, but it really wouldnt make any sense to do that, I'm just mentioning it here so that you know what to avoid. Ideally, we'll want the filename and the title to be very similar if not identical. We name the page by using the <title></title> tags located up in the <head> section of the page. Again, we want to name the page descriptively, so then lets type 'airbrushed nail training in dublin' into those <title> tags. We should end up with

<title>Airbrushed Nail Training in Dublin</title>

Note that this time, we type the words exactly as we normally would, ie, we put spaces where there should be spaces without any need for hyphens or underscores. As I said earlier, the <title> tags are given close consideration by the search engines, so with that in mind, choose your title wisely. It also stands to reason that it's highly unlikely that you'll have another page in your site using the same title, so then, optimise each of your pages for its own particular content. Special mention should also be given to the fact that there are still a vast majority of people who insist on placing their website name into the title of their page. IT SERVES NO PURPOSE WHATSOEVER TO DO THIS unless your website name itself is a very competitive term or a descriptive phrase for your chosen field. If you website name is 'Tracy's Tips', 'Dinky Digits' etc, you are just wasting your title if you put that text in there, and if you waste your title, you've lost a big opportunity to influence the search engines. Think long and hard about this.

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Next we'll have a look at our 'keywords' and 'description' metatags. These too are located up in the <head> section of our page.

<meta name="keywords" content="airbrushed nail art training, nail art class, airbrushing, nail art course, airbrush class, airbrushing art, nailart, Northern ireland, irish, Dublin, Ireland">

This is a list of keywords and phrases that YOU think are the most important to attract visitors and search engines to your pages. Many search engines dont take notice of the keywords metatag but some of them still do, so it's no harm to include this info in the head section of your page as it costs nothing to do so. Make sure that any keywords that you do include in this group are also placed on your page in your body text. As I said earlier, most of the search engines now will just pick up the keywords straight from your visible text on the page. Make sure you give them something to 'feed on'. Please take note that if you want to have the keywords 'mobile nail technician' on your keywords list, it wont serve much purpose UNLESS it is also included in the visible text on your page.

<meta name="description" content="Airbrushed Nail Art Training with Liberty Nail Design, the home of Airbrushing in Ireland. Professional tuition presented in a friendly and warm environment.">

This is an abbreviated description of your page and some of the search engines will include this description under your link in the search results. Is this important? Well, Lets say that someone does a search for nail art training. They are presented with a page of results listing 10 websites, none of the sites have written a description for their page with the exception of one, let's say it's the one above. The description lets the searcher know who is offering the training, where it is located and describes the setting. I'm sure you'll agree that most people are gonna click on the link that has a description attached.

(Part 2 to follow)

NoticeableNails · 22-05-06, 02:40 PM

I know this is an old thread, but I think it has loads of interesting info for peeps who are creating their own websites.
As Sean knows I'm a website tinkerer and I'm always playing with my site, so this info was great.
What I'm sorry to see is that there is no part 2??
Come on Seanny give us some more website gold!
Pretty Please

Seanny · 23-05-06, 04:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NoticeableNails

I know this is an old thread, but I think it has loads of interesting info for peeps who are creating their own websites.
As Sean knows I'm a website tinkerer and I'm always playing with my site, so this info was great.
What I'm sorry to see is that there is no part 2??
Come on Seanny give us some more website gold!
Pretty Please

Wow!! Someone has read one of my threads. Woo-hoo! Website Gold Jo? That's pushing it just a tad.

Unfortunately I havent as yet got around to writing part 2 but I hope to do so soon. Watch this space.

~Emmsybabes~ · 01-09-07, 11:53 PM

i have just read and re read this and Im still confused lol,
but it is a fab tutorial , thankyou seanny x

raiderlax · 03-09-07, 04:46 AM

That is a pretty great tutorial thanks a lot.

six · 03-09-07, 09:49 AM

Ive also just noticed this, great tutorial Seanny. Did you ever get round to doing part 2?

JackieMc · 03-09-07, 09:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by six

Ive also just noticed this, great tutorial Seanny. Did you ever get round to doing part 2?

I'll give him a prod and remind him about it! *LOL*

Sals · 03-09-07, 12:41 PM

Blimey, bit of a Monday morning workout for my poor little brain! Thanks Seanny, and thanks for bumping it up Jo.