The Importance of Meta Tags
Meta tags are an important part of the web programming process. In this first part of the series, we are going to take a look at some of the different tags you should be using in your code.
First, it's important to understand what meta tags are. They are elements that are used to provide metadata about a web page. These tags are placed in the [head] part of the code. These elements are used to specify keywords, page description, authorship, robot/crawler instructions, etc. These tags are important to help search engines crawl your site and therefore help in search engine ranking.
Meta Description Tag
This is a very important tag and shouldn't be left out of your code. It is used to provide the search engines with a short and concise description of that particular page. Yes, that means that each page of the site should have a different description. That will help immensely with your page ranking. This description should generally be kept to about 160 characters. With the advent of Twitter, it shouldn't be hard to come up with a page description in the same amount of space it takes you to tweet about your breakfast. Look at the image below. This is a screen print of the description that is displayed when you search for my site, Flying Tomato Design. You'll note that the description for the home page is too long - it gets cut off. So, I need to change that. However, you'll notice that the description tag for the contact page is a great length.
Meta Keywords Tag
The keywords tag used to be vital to a website. Originally, it was intended as a way to tell search engines the main concept of your site with specific words. However, it didn't take long for web developers to figure out that they could manipulate the search results. Eventually, you would search for "giraffes" and somehow you'd come up with a porn site. It was because people were putting high ranking keywords in their code whether or not the content actually supported it. Today, search engine companies don't really use keywords. However, Yahoo! does put some sort of emphasis on it still.
Meta Robots Tag
This tag tells the search engines whether or not it should follow the links appearing on that page. If you already have a [robots.txt] file, there's no need for this tag. Here are the common commands used with the Meta Robots Tag:
- noindex: this tells the spider not to index that page
- follow: tells the spider to follow the links on that page and index them
- nofollow: tells the spider to not follow the links on the page, but index the page
Other Tags
Here's a list of other tags to use in your code. These are pretty self-explanatory so I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on these.
- <meta name="Copyright" content="Copyright Flying Tomato Design: 2007-2009" />
- <meta name="Author" content="Flying Tomato Design" />
- <meta name="Email" content="office@flyingtomatodesign.com" />
- <meta name="Charset" content="UTF-8" />
- <meta name="Distribution" content="Global" />
- <meta name="Rating" content="General" />
- <meta name="Revisit After" content="1 Day" />
Conclusion
So, in conclusion, most Meta Tags are still important today. They help with your search engine ranking and placement. However, other tags, such as the Keywords tag isn't so useful any more. In our next post, we'll look closer at the Keywords Tag in more detail; why it was so great to begin with, and what search engines do with it now.
Small Business Online Advertising
Our last blog was about the cost of doing business. I suppose it would've been more appropriate to title it the "Cost of not advertising with your website". However, the message is clear; if you want to get exposure for your business, you can't rely on the old standards (only) to get it done. Whether you like it or not, you need to roll with the times.
So what does that mean? Well, if you want to reach out to new audiences online, it will take almost a brute force attack at all the mediums to get it done. That means riding the social networking train, using ad words and banner ads, having a blog that you update regularly, maybe even use an email newsletter where you can send virtual coupons to your readers.
Social Networking
Social networking, in my opinion is kind of a misnomer. I mean, you're not out handing business cards out to people and making contacts the "old fashioned" way. It's not sitting at the bar and BSing with the guy next to you. Rather, you're a part of networks like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIN, StumbleUpon, Last.FM, etc. Involvement in the various social networks will be varied from person to person. For example, you might use MySpace just for personal contacts and Facebook for business connections. Personally, I don't use MySpace. I deleted my profile some time ago. I use my Facebook to connect with friends both new and old. However, I also have created a page for my business that I use to communicate with "fans" (blog updates, new projects, etc). I use LinkedIN to connect with other professionals in the design world. Obviously, you want to be cautious with what you share and with whom. Once you put your info out there, it's there for literally EVERYONE to see. So be wise about it.
AdWords
AdWords (google, Yahoo, etc) are a good idea to target specific keyword searches. However, it can be difficult to get it figured out and do it right. Google AdWords is particularly baffling; you almost need a doctorate to be successful with it. The basic premise of it is that you create an ad that targets certain keywords. Then the ads show up when someone searches for that word. You pay for the ad each time someone clicks on it. Depending on the keyword, you could end up paying through the nose for it. So you have to be smart about what words/segments you target. Otherwise you end up throwing out good money with no results to show for it.
Banner Ads
Personally, I'm not sold on the effectiveness of banners as a form of advertising. You'll notice that I have a banner on the home page of this blog. However, it's used to advertise my business. I don't really like ads, but I also realize that they are a necessary evil. They do help with backlinks and could help bring in a little extra source of money. I think there's a middle ground where there's an acceptable compromise between no ads and MySpace. Once they start to get too numerous, annoying, or affecting your overall web browsing experience, I think you've gone too far. So, this is another area where wisdom and caution are to be taken. You don't want to annoy your visitors so much that they bail as soon as they've shown up.
Bloging
Writing a blog can be tricky. You have to decide what you're going to write about and how it pertains to your business. For example, if you have a gym, you want to blog about fitness, health, weight lifting, even nutrition. That way, not does your blog make sense with your type of business, but your backlinks and trackbacks will be so much more meaningful since it pertains to your business overall. That's what I've tried to do with this blog. I've tried to write articles that only deal with website design, development, search engine optimization, etc. Obviously this post and the other about small business advertising kind of break out of that. However, even with those two outlyers, there is a running theme of maximizing your presence online with your website. Let's put it this way; you wouldn't expect a web design company to have a blog about knitting, would you?
Newsletter
This is another one of those things that I doubt it's effectiveness. Sure, I've signed up for some email blasts (NewEgg, Buy.com, World Wildlife Federation, One.org), but frankly I don't read the emails 75% of the time. Either I'm too busy or just don't feel like taking the two minutes to read it. So, I figure everyone else out there must feel the same way about it as me. However, at Christmas time, I took a gamble and tried a newsletter of sorts. I sent out a "Holiay" card with a couple different coupons. One was for existing clients to get a discount on their next redesign. The other was a referral bonus, which was dependent on the person referred signing a new contract. At the time of this writing, I have yet to have anyone redeem one of those coupons. Maybe it was my offer, maybe it was my audience, but I haven't seen any return for the effort. In business, ROI is key. You need to make sure that you're getting your money's worth and frankly, I see more benefit with the influx of visitors to this blog than I have with that newsletter. With the changing landscape of the internet and social interaction, I think that the newsletter is quickly being replaced by other, more convenient and on-demand means.
Flash vs HTML5
The battle between Flash and HTML5 has been heating up lately. There's a lot of debate not only by the people who know what goes into Flash and HTML5, but also from the general public.
You can't really surf the web without catching an argument about how Flash is bloated and overall crap and that HTML5 is the savior of the interwebs. Gizmodo, Crunchgear, and Endgadget are just a few sites that talk about the subject. However, now you have Apple going head to head with Adobe in the last few months. First when the iPhone came out, it was annoying that they didn't allow Flash on it. However, most people forgave Apple because they figured that, well, it's a cell phone and other manufacturers make the rules to govern their phones, why not Apple? Then Apple rolls out the iPad. (side note, I've played with one and I still think it's an oversized, overpriced iPod Touch.) Anyway, the iPad doesn't support Flash. Rather, Apple is trying to push their codec, H.264. They've been using it for the last few years to encode video files for the iPod Touch and iPhones. It's a good format, but hell, there's better out there. So, here's the disturbing thing; Apple's show of obstinance is actually winning them ground! You've actually got website owners willing to ditch Flash just so their site will work on that POS iPad. I find that utterly rediculous! Why should we, the web developers bow to Apple's wishes? Personally, I don't necessarily like Flash en masse. It has it's merits in certain situations, though. However, when one company is trying to bend the rules to their favor, that's when we should all stop and take stock of what's going on here. I mean, rather than everyone bowing to Apple, why not push back and say, "nope, we're not going to give in to your closed system".
Okay, I'm sorry, I can tend to rattle on and I have a few gripes with Apple lately so, I'll try to keep on course.
Anyway, like I said above, Flash has it's merits. Personally, I don't like building entire websites out of Flash. Primarily because they can't be read by search engines and therefore it's much more difficult to correctly optimize them. I think HTML5 is great and if you've seen some of the demos out there, it's really impressive. Heck, never mind the demos, take a look at YouTube. Yup. YouTube is now all HTML5. However, I don't think that HTML5 is 100% our answer to a smoother web surfing experience. Granted, I think it's a big piece of the puzzle. However, I think the responsibility lies squarely on the shoulders of web developers to stop building shitty sites and to start doing it right. They need to quit cutting corners and put in the time, hard work, and effort to make a site great using whatever technology that site requires. Too many people pigeon-hole themselves and refuse to grow beyond what they're comfortable; be it Flash, HTML, or other.
As I've said before, I'm not a huge fan of Flash. However, I'll use it if I have to. I have a client that wanted a full Flash website. So, knowing it's SEO limitations, I built a Flash landing page (my thoughts on those another time) and built the rest of the site using jQuery. The site is interactive like she wanted, but it now works well with SEO techniques. So ultimately, she really is the big winner here.
Anyway, if I can leave you with just one thought, it would be this; HTML5 is Friggin' awesome and Flash is bloated. However, in order to build a web surfing experience that is interactive, exciting, and smooth, we need to leverage all of the technologies. Moreover, it's not up to big companies to decide for us what that will look like.
SEO Part 3: The Reckoning
This is our third post in our series about SEO. If you haven't seen them already, you should visit the first and second blogs. The first one is a high level overview and the second dives a bit deeper and deals with keywords, ALT Image text, etc.
In this post, we will look at backlinking and social media and how they affect your SEO.
Backlinking
The concept/definition is pretty simple: Backlinks are inbound links to your site. The more outside links you have pointing to your site, the better. That means that your site will rank higher based on importance.
Example: You and I each have a website dealing with and farms. I have 10 sites that link back to me in one way or another. However, you have 100 sites that link back to you. Because you have more sites that link back to you, the search engines will interpret this as your site is more popular or important than mine and therefore rank it higher than mine.
The inherent problem that I see with this is with content. If you really think about it, it's not hard (although time consuming) to start getting a bunch of links pointing back to your site. However, does the quality of your content warrant it? There are a number of techniques out there, one of which is building or taking advantage of a link farm. You don't want to do that. A link farm is a group of sites that all link back to each other. This is a form of spamming the search engine (spamdexing) and is considered all around bad.
There's also a concept called "linkbaiting". This is when there is some breaking news and you end up having a gazillion bloggers write about it. A good example of this was/is the iPhone 4 debacle between Apple, Gizmodo, and that dude that screwed up and left the phone at a bar. If you look back at my blog posts, you'll see I didn't touch the subject here. I wanted to stay true to the intent of this blog, even at the possible detriment of hits. The point of linkbaiting is that you're writing about a topic that is interesting to a large group of people in the hopes of getting them to visit your site and link back to you.
However, the search engines also consider the quality of the backlink. In short, it looks at both sites and determines if the site linking to you is relevant to what you're blogging about. In particular, what kind of authority level does that site have about that specific topic/genre? The more authoritative the site, the better the quality. So, in my example above, if I would've blogged about that iPhone 4 issue, I may have garnered a lot of visitors and possibly some backlinks. However, those links would have a low value because that topic overall doesn't have anything to do with this blog. Or consider the other side; I've now linked back to Gizmodo (above) for the sake of the exmaple. They'll get a backlink from me but it won't matter much due to the content of this site.
So, backlinking is necessary but the quality of that backlink trumps sheer numbers. So the Holy Grail would be to have a ton of backlinks from authoritative sites that share the same or similar content.
Social Networks
Social Networking... the bain of my existence. On one hand, I enjoy connecting with old friends via Facebook, on the other hand, it's a huge waste of my time. Here's a sad little story to entertain you for a minute before we get into the subject:
By nature, I'm a fairly introverted person. I enjoy my alone time and I don't particularly enjoy crowds (no, I'm not anti-social and no, I don't live in a shed in the Montana back country). So I don't generally go shopping. Anywhere - the mall, the grocery store... if I can, I'll get what I need online. It's generally cheaper and a more efficient use of my time, and I don't have to deal with large crowds of people. Anyway, our family had our kids and my wife and I decided to do some shoe shopping this weekend. When we were done, I couldn't help but think how weird it was shopping in person; having to deal with a sales rep and their inflated retail pricing. It occurred to me that the more we live on the web and the bulk of our interactions are via Facebook, MySpace, etc, the more our society fails. On one hand, it's great to have info at your fingertips, on the other, it's putting up fences interpersonally.
So to me, social networking is a bitter-sweet thing. As a business owner, I realize I need that component to help my business grow. On the other, I think it is the downfall of our society (okay, that might be a little over-dramatic). So, let's just look at the pluses and what it's intended to do.
Social networking focuses on building relationships between people/groups who share the same interests and/or activities. My LinkedIn profile connects me with other designers while my Facebook profile connects me with scattered friends. As a business model, it allows me to connect with more people at a relatively low cost (free). Better yet, it allows me to connect with people in different parts of the world. Otherwise, the alternative is the local phone book. While that is an important aspect to a business owner, it's limited to your region. Another great thing about social networking is that it provides a backlink to your site. Granted, it may not be a real quality backlink in some situations, but at least it's something.
There are a number of different directions one can take when discussing social networking. I wanted to focus primarily on the aspect of how it can build your customer base and that can help with your backlinks and overall visibility online.
I have to admit this, though; I have yet to garner a new customer as a result of any of my (albeit meager) attempts at social networking. Maybe it's because I just don't have all the time/motivation it requires. Or maybe it's just not as effective a tool as they say. Time will tell, I suppose.
