Using Keywords – Important SEO HTML Basics

Year in and year out we see adjustments in search engine requirements and new scripting techniques. The later part of 2009 brought many quiet changes in SEO and some major announcements as well. Being good at something starts with being ‘Brilliant At The Basics”. HTML and how a page is coded should follow some basic standard guidelines to ensure search engine readiness and optimization. Most if not all of these should be rock solid before a site is launched. They seem simple but without them, you face search engine uncertainty. Google announced earlier in 2009 that it no longer reads the meta keywords. Don’t write them off though, they are now more important than ever.

Follow these basic SEO coding standards and utilize your keywords to ensure proper search engine placement.

Title Tag – No more than 70 characters

Recommended Title Tag Syntax Keyword < Category | Website Title

Meta Description - No more than 155 characters

Common Canonical Homepage Issue -
Great – http://www.mysite.com/
Unacceptable – http://www.mysite.com
http://mysite.com/
http://www.mysite.com/index.html
http://mysite.com/index.html

To condense the four default homepages into one homepage, use 301 redirects to correct for erroneous incoming links and make all internal links point to your domain using the syntax ‘http://www.mysite.com/’. Always include trailing “/” on folders.

H1,H2,H3 -
<h1>Most Important</h1>
<h2>Second Most Important</h2>
<h3>Third Most Important</h3>

Bold, Strong – <b>Keyword</b>

Image – <img src=”keyword.jpg” alt=””keyword”/>

Hyperlink – <a linkindex=”334″ href=”http://www.mysite.com/webpage.html” title=””keyword””>Keyword in Anchor Text</a>

Hyperlink – <a linkindex=”335″ href=”http://www.mysite.com/webpage.html” title=””keyword”>(No Followed) rel=”nofollow”>Keyword in Anchor Text</a>

Page File Size- No more than 150 kilobytes (Before Images, and other Attachments)

Amount of links – No more than 100 unique links per page

As you can see, keywords are still very important. Its best to use what would be your meta keywords for each page as your outline or frame of reference from which to write. I try to keep a list of my targeted keywords on my desk as I write pages and posts. then as you layout the coding for your page, your keywords will remain consistent. So while Google may not read your meta keywords, blatantly ignoring the inherent advantages may be a fatal mistake. Did I miss anything obvious?