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Promotional Content... It's the little things that count |
by:
Edward B. Toupin |
Promotional content is the invisible content in the various recesses of a
Web page. This type of content is used by search engines and directories to
properly categorize your site and its pages during indexing.
--- Site Title ---
The title is the first thing a search engine displays as a result of a
search. This makes it imperative that the title contains something readable
and descriptive. Do not place a bunch of redundant terms in your
title---make sure that the title can be read as a sentence. If the reader
cannot understand the meaning of the title, then chances are they will not
visit your site.
Once you create your page title, place it once within the header of the page
using the < itle> tags. Many marketers will place their title as
many as five to ten times within the header of their page! This is good in
that your relevance increases from the number of keywords; however, this
repetitive approach is poor netiquette and is usually not accepted by most
search engines.
--- META Tags ---
Meta Tags are information fields located in the header of a Web page. These
tags store information about your browser, keywords, site description, and
authoring information. The two main Meta Tags are "description" and
"keywords." The "description" tag contains a short description of your page
while the "keywords" tag contains a search keyword list for your page.
These two Meta Tags are used by search engines to index your site and are
critical elements of every Web page. When your site is indexed, users can
enter search topics into the search engine to locate your site based on
these two tags.
The Meta Tags should look like this in the of your Web page:
To ensure the proper indexing of your page, you will have to devise a
content scheme that targets numerous types of search engines. Note that
different search engines will index your site in different ways, depending
on the content. For instance, the following list provides information on the
different ways that search engines can index your site:
* Some search engines look for an agreement between the description,
keyword, title, and body.
* Some search engines use only the information located in the first line of
the body of the page.
* Some search engines use a combination of the Meta Tags and the body
content to weight your page based upon consistency.
Obviously, you would want to maintain a consistent content and style
throughout your page. It is important, however, to learn how the different
types of search engines work to have your page properly positioned in the
lists.
--- Hidden Form Fields ---
Once you've developed the keywords for your site, you'll find that you still
have over a dozen or so discarded phrases and words that are relevant to
your page. Your Meta Tags are probably filled to the maximum 255 character
limit and that the first line of your page body is a graphic and contains no
pertinent text. Forcing any of these additional phrases and keywords into
the page can get you rejected from several search engines for "keyword
stuffing," described below.
These types of dilemmas are quite common for many Web page developers, but
the solution is simple: a hidden form field. This form field is identical to
every other form field (e.g. input fields, radio buttons, check boxes,
etc.), however, it cannot be seen on the page in a browser.
The hidden form fields go in the body of the Web page and look like the
following:
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