Hi, everyone, it’s my turn to post again. Hope you found something valuable from my last post.

Last time I introduced a bit about Off-page SEO, and I stated that “PageRank is NOT THE ONLY FACTOR that determines your Page Ranking”. So, what else can boost your Page Ranking up? The answer would be “On-Page SEO”.

What’s the difference between On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO?
On-Page SEO Factors that are on your page, such as tags, text, images, videos and URL.
Off-Page SEO Factors that are not on your page, such as links from other sites.

How do tags work in On-Page SEO?
Well, On-Page SEO is a very extensive topic so we’ll cover the main factors today. Tags are the very basic factor that you should always include. Below, I will explain and demonstrate some important tags that search engines will look at on a search action.

1. Title Tag:
Title tag is a very important rank factor. It is what you see on the toolbar, the title when you add to ‘my favorites’, the title of the page and the title of the search result. Therefore, it’s really important that you give a name to your page. When deciding a title tag, make sure the title is unique from other pages, related to the page’s topic, and include keywords that people might search for. Also, you should keep your title short but clear. The maximum characters are 70. Within this 70 characters, make sure you let your audiences know what the page is about, where they are and what you do.
An Example of Title Tag would be:
<title>EQQY Bakery – Best Bakery in Vancouver, Richmond BC</title>

2. Keywords Meta Tag:
Keywords Meta Tag is what the search engine will look for based on the search terms. The keywords that you put have to be relevant to what the page is about, otherwise your page might be marked as spam by search engines.

However, because of previous web developers overly using/abusing keywords meta tags, some search engines decided to search on “keywords” found spread throughout a website instead of Keywords Meta Tag. What’s the difference between these two? The keywords meta tag is a location where keywords for your webpage can be listed. Keywords themselves can be found anywhere in your website where there is live text.

While Keywords Meta Tags do not carry much weight any longer, it’s still a good idea to put one in your page. The maximum number for keywords is 5-10 words (175 characters), per page. Also, make sure that you don’t repeat the same sets of keywords on every pages.
An Example of Keywords Meta Tag would be:
<meta name=”keywords” content=”EQQY Bakery, Vancouver Bakery, Best Bakery, Richmond Bakery” />

More information about why some search engines ignore keyword meta tags can be found here:
Google Does Not Use Keywords Meta Tag

3. Description Meta Tag:
Description Meta Tag is what you see in a search result under each page’s title. This description should be short and clear about the page’s topic. When writing the description Meta Tag, make sure you include the “keywords” of the page so the search engine will pick up these words. This tag is highly important because it can determine audience’s wish of clicking into your site or not. Ideally, the maximum characters are 150.
An Example of Description Meta Tag would be:
<meta name=”description” content=”EQQY Bakery sales the best bread online in Richmond. We… blah blah blah” />

4. Robots Meta Tag:
Robots Meta Tag is really important for searches as well. Remember the “web spider” we talk about on last post? We also called it “Google Bot”. This tag is for the web spider to know what to do with this page. The web spider will follow whatever rule you gave on this page, and do the actions. The types of Robots Meta Tag are:

* index & noindex = whether the spider should index this page or not
* follow & nofollow = whether the spider should follow the links in this page or not
* all & none = Index and follow or neither index nor follow
This is an example why you don’t want the search engine to find your page:
If this page is a security page, you set to “noindex” and “nofollow” or simply just set to “none”.
If the links on this page are not important to your page(example: advertisement), you set to “nofollow”.

If you don’t see a Robots Meta Tag on your page, by default it’s set to “index, follow”.
An Example of Robots Meta Tag would be:
<meta name=”robots” content=”INDEX,NOFOLLOW” />
An Example for Google’s Robots meta Tag would be:
<meta name=”googlebot” content=”noindex, nofollow, noarchive”>

5. Language Meta Tag:
Language Meta Tag is not as important as the tags above, but it help the search engine to categories your pages. This tag presents the primary language(s) of the page.
An Example for Language Meta Tag would be:
<meta http-equiv=”content-language” content=”en,fr”>

6. Link Tag:
Link Tag is usually used in blogs or news. It tells search engine the relationship between pages. By adding this tag, the search engine will not only index the current blog post or news but also index the previous post and the next post.
Examples for Link Tag:
<link rel=”prev” href=”/events/Dec-2011″>
<link rel=”next” href=”/events/Feb-2012″>

7. Head Tag:
Head Tags are used in page content. There are usually heading 1 to 6, but the search engine will only pickup heading 1, sometimes heading 2 as well. Heading 1 is considered the title of your content, and also a “keywords” for search engine. It’s really important that you SHOULD only have one heading 1 in your page and it should be clear to show what the content is about.
An Example for Head Tag:
<h1>EQQY Bakery History</h1>
(notice I used ‘eqqy bakery’ instead of ‘our’ to include my keyword)

8. Anchor Tag:
Anchor Tag are hyperlinks that link to either internal site or external site, found throughout websites. Not only can they boost other people’s PageRank, but they will also benefit your own PageRank. You can put “Keywords” in it so the search engine can pick up the keywords. This is really important so please avoid using “click here” as the text. It should be clear; for example, by using “About EQQY Bakery” as the link text, the audience will know where this link leads to. Also, if you are connecting to an external link/website, make sure you link to a trusted site. If the site is not trusted, make sure you include a attribute (rel=”nofollow”) to tell the web spider not to follow this link. Another attribute that can help for SEO are “title” attributes. “Title” attributes are that little box of text that appear beside the link when you hover on it.

Bad Example: Please click Here to learn about EQQY Bakery.
Good Example: I would like to learn more about EQQY Bakery.

An Example for a ‘nofollow’ Anchor Tag:
<a href=”http://eqqyBakery.com” rel=”nofollow”>EQQY Bakery</a>
An Example for a ‘title’ attribute:
<a href=”http://eqqyBakery.com” title=”EQQY Bakery”></a>
For more information about ‘title’ tag:
Don’t neglect the Title Attribute

9. Image Tag:
Image Tag is the tag that displays images. You may think this isn’t important as text, but it really is. Remember, everything on the web is formed by text. Computers don’t read images, they read text. It does effect your SEO a lot. Most search engines search for images and this search works exactly like website search. Audiences don’t necessary come to your site by web searching, they might come from an image search, especially for online painters, portfolios, or graphic designers.

So, what should you pay attention to? First, the name of your image. Give each of your image a short descriptive name. For example: “eqqy-apple-pie” instead of “pie-1″ because search engine will also analyze this as a “Keyword”. Second, include a “title” attribute as well. It could be the name of the image, so when a user hovers on the image, they can easily understand what it’s about. Third, an “alt” attribute. “Alt” attribute has two uses. The first one is when your image is moved or somehow the server can’t find the image, this alt text will replace your image so the user knows what’s going on with the page. The second use is for SEO, of course. Search Engine will also search “alt” attributes and find the “Keywords”.

An full example for a Image Tag would be:
<img src=”image/eqqy-apple-pie.png” title=”EQQY Apple Pie” alt=”delicious eqqy apple pie” />

After seeing these awesome tags that can boost up your SEO, you might be wondering what exactly does “Keywords” mean? Why do I quote them every time I mention them? Well, because these are another important factor of On-Page SEO which does not belong to the “tag” category. We’ll discuss these next time!