Since the dawn of search engine creation,
man has created myths and legends to explain what he himself could
not. These myths have been passed down through the years from generation
to generation. With the advent of modern science, however, we are
now able to put these myths to bed forever.
1. Mega-Meta
There is no bigger myth than that of the meta-tag.
If anyone tells you that the secret to high search engine rankings
is with meta-tags laugh at them and call them names. This, my friends
is an antiquated myth.
A meta-tag is in the head of your HTML and contains
keywords and a description of the page. The code looks like this
for the page you are reading:
<head>
<title>JFJwebdesigns - Affordable All-In-One Web Design &
Hosting For Small Businesses</title>
<meta NAME="Author" CONTENT="JFJ webdesigns -- http://www.jfjwebdesigns.com
--" />
<meta NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="web site, Free Advice, Free, Free
Consultation, Freebies, Sligo, Co. Sligo, Ballymote Co. Sligo,
design, web design, custom, website, designer, consultant,
development, web hosting, hosting, professional, e-commerce,
shopping cart, database, search engine, optimization, promotion,
flash, internet, services, ecommerce, commerce, affordable,
webmaster, service, search engine submission, small business,"
/>
<meta NAME="Description" CONTENT="Web Site Design, Sligo Web
Design, Web Hosting, WebSite Designers, Web Designer, Web
Developer, Website Hosting,Internet Marketing, Internet
Newsletters, jfj webdesigns." />
<meta NAME="revisit-after" CONTENT="15 days" />
<meta NAME="robots" CONTENT="all" />
<meta NAME="rating" CONTENT="general" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/jfj.css" type="text/css" />
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" />
<script language="javascript">
function MM_preloadImages() { //v3.0
var d=document; if(d.images){ if(!d.MM_p) d.MM_p=new Array();
var i,j=d.MM_p.length,a=MM_preloadImages.arguments; for(i=0; i<a.length;
i++)
if (a[i].indexOf("#")!=0){ d.MM_p[j]=new Image; d.MM_p[j++].src=a[i];}}
}
</script>
</head>
There was a time long ago when meta-tags were created
just for the search engines. After all, if you were a newly designed
search engine robot, wouldn't you like to receive a little bundle
of information about each page you indexed? That would be easier
than a complex algorithm and web designers are trust-worthy people,
right? Well, of course not. All a crafty web designer would have
to do to spam the search engine would be to add sexy words to their
meta-tag keywords and trick visitors into visiting their site on
something completely different - say shoe polish.
Some search engines still figure your meta-tags
into their algorithms so do use them. More often, the search engines
will display your meta-description under your link so spend some
time writing accurate descriptions of each page.
2. Hidden Content
As the average bandwidth and connection speed increased,
web designers were afforded a lot more freedom in their designs.
More images could be used and then came the advent of Macromedia
Flash which allowed a designer to use scalable vector graphics to
create eye-catching animations. All of this was wonderful except
the search engines couldn't see any of it and the image/Flash laden
sites started to lose their grip on high rankings.
About this time, another little trick-of-the-trade
was born. Web designers would fill the page under the flash movie
or image map with content masked in the same color of the background.
The visitor couldn't see the icky content but the search engines
didn't know the difference and presto - they were back in the top
ten.
But remember what we learned in lesson one about
content? The search engine algorithms are designed to provide the
best content to their users. Providing content that the visitor
can't see is useless. Therefore, the best search engine algorithms
were programmed to look for this type of spam.
What's more, not only will most search engines
dismiss a site's feeble attempts to spam with hidden content, many
will penalize the site and even exclude it from their index for
life. Yikes!
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