Optimizing your website for Search Engines (SEO - Search Engine Optimization) is definitely a good option to help generate website traffic
This article covers the basics / first steps needed to ensure that people are able to find your website on the various Search Engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc…).
Meta Tags are HTML tags that provide hidden information to Search Engines to describe the content of the webpages that they are crawling. Website owners use this resource to help with their ranking on Search Engines. Many Search Engines incorporate reading Meta Tags as part of their indexing process. You can setup Meta Tags for your overall website and optionally for each individual page on your website as well.
- Setup for Overall Website:
- Click on "Meta Tags" from the menu on the left in your COOLSite Admin.
- Enter your Meta Description into the corresponding box on this page. This is the text used by Search Engines to display a brief summary about your website. When you search for Keywords on a Search Engine, you will get a number of results. Under each result, it will show a brief summary below the link for the corresponding website, which actually uses your Meta Description text.
- Enter your Meta Keywords into the corresponding box on this page. These Keywords are indexed by Search Engines and placed into their database. When someone types in keyword phrases into a Search Engine, the Search Engine will go through their index and return the closest / most relevant matches of websites, based on the requested keyword phrase that was entered.
Please note that your Meta Keywords should be limited to single words or short two or three word phrases, each separated by a comma and with no surrounding HTML tags. For example, if you are selling beach towels on your website, your Meta Keywords can include: Beach Towels, Towel, Towels, Sunbathing. You should avoid using words like "to", "and", "my", "at", etc..., when entering your Meta Keywords.
If you are given Meta Keywords with the following example content (see below), you will need to remove the surrounding HTML tags and enter the specific words only.
Example with HTML tags (typically provided by automated tools)
<meta name="keywords" content=" Fine Products, Great Services">
* Remove the surrounding HTML tags and enter the following instead: Fine Products, Great Services
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Click on the "Submit" button at the bottom of the page to save your changes.
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Submit your website to the various Search Engines of your choice (ie: Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc...), so that your website can be properly indexed / crawled, and based on how good and visited your website content is, this will determine your ranking on the Search Engines.
You can submit your website to Google by going to google.com/addurl, and you can submit your website to Yahoo! and Bing by going to http://www.bing.com/toolbox/submit-site-url. Once your website is submitted to the Search Engines, please allow some time for it to appear in the search results.
Note, Search Engines typically have character limits on the amount of Meta Description and Meta Keywords that they can scan. Therefore, it is important to keep your Meta Description short and to the point (two to three sentences at most), and only enter relevant Meta Keywords that pertain to your website specifically.
Also, Meta Description and Meta Keywords are not actually displayed anywhere on your website. They only appear in the HTML code / Page Source for your website, which Search Engines read.
- Setup for Individual Pages:
- Click on "Pages" from the menu on the left in your COOLSite Admin.
- Click on the corresponding icon under the "Meta Tags" column for the specific page in which you are setting up Meta Tags for.
- Complete the information on the pop-up window and note that the same guidelines mentioned above for the Meta Description and Meta Keywords for your overall website, also applies here as well.
- Click on the "Save" button at the top or bottom of this pop-up window to save your changes.
Example Meta Tags for a pizza shop, Lorenzo's One Stop Pizza Shop
Meta Description: Conveniently located in downtown West Chester, PA! We offer catering, pizza-by-the-slice, and daily discounts! Come here for all of your pizza needs.
Meta Keywords: pizza, pizza shop, lorenzo, lorenzo's, lorenzo's one stop pizza shop, slice, slices, broccoli, pepperoni, sausage, peppers, daily specials, west chester, pennsylvania, white pizza, cheese, sauce, crust, italian, italian food, brick oven, market street, campus
Please also see the following related Knowledge Base articles as well.