Keywords were once the magic ingredient that unlocked the door to search engine optimization. Find the right words, use them frequently in your text, reference them in your website’s section, and presto, instant ratings in the search engine results. They were initially used by search engines for determining what the website was about. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for unscrupulous web masters to figure out how to manipulate keywords; often using keywords that had no application to their blog at all, but that would bring great search engine results. An example would be the use of a celebrity name in articles that had nothing to do with the celebrity at all, but found the name handy for promoting a product.
What Search Bots Do
The new search bots that determine algorithms for website placement have recently become a bit more sophisticated. They are able to determine a website’s subject matter in terms of content, rating them in accordance with greatest viewer interest; which could also be defined as projected viewer interest. New blogs might appear high in Google rankings, based primarily on unique content, rather than the amount of initial traffic. It makes one wonder if the meta-tags are really important.
Actually, there are several reasons why your meta-tags continue to be useful. Your meta-tags serve as a summary of your article. Review your page when you have finished writing your blog. Take note of the ten best keywords or phrases that describe the content of your blog. Keep them in complete agreement. Do not use repetitive words, or change the spelling of a word so you can use it twice. A concise summary of your page will help in determining search engine results.
The meta-tags are sometimes used in page description under the title page for results, instead of a line from your article or blog. With well-organized meta-tags, the Google algorithms could decide your summary is better than the auto-generated response based on a line from the page’s content. Google does not, however, use the meta description as part of the algorithm to determine page rank. Its primary function is for the user to read within the search results.
Specifying Behavior Through Robots.txt
Your meta-robots tag can be used to specify whether you want the search engines to index your page or only follow the links appearing on it. You do not need to use the meta-robots tag however, if you are using a detailed robots.txt file to block any specific indexing. There are four different commands for the Meta Robots Tag.
• Index: allows the robots to crawl your entire page.
• Noindex: Instructs the robots not to crawl your page.
• Follow: Instructs the robots to follow the links built into the page and follow them.
• Nofollow: Instructs the robots not to follow the links in the page and index them.
While not considered a meta-tag, your title plays a very important role in HTML coding. Your title tag does not appear anywhere else on your page except in the top bar of your browser. It is these words or phrase that will appear in the search engines result page (SERP). All search engines use the title tag to determine what the article or blog is about. Users read the title tag, then the description to decide whether or not they want to go to the site.
While you will gain very little, and perhaps lose a lot, through keyword manipulation, providing good content, a title that reflects the topic of your blog, and a concise summary of the article can do much to increase your ranking in the search engine results. The new algorithms are designed to attract human interest, so make your page as interesting as possible. If you are using a CMS, like WordPress, many WordPress themes already have the ability to add meta tags, keywords and descriptions to your pages and you can easily customize your information without having to know a lot of coding.
Image courtesy of www.earthcacheevent.org
About author
Olga Ionel is a creative writer at ThemeFuse.com – a top provider of WordPress themes. She is passionate about studying online marketing industry and sharing informative tips.
