BeauCreations blog

by Suzi Beaumont,  BeauCreations Web Design – revised 6/08

There’s plenty of discussion on this topic, but I thought I’d share a very simple set of recommendations that seems to work for my clients.  Understand, most of my clients are micro businesses, start-ups, or individuals with personal or brochure web sites.  Their web sites give them credibility and help sell their service or product to prospective clients (many of whom have already made contact).  They are generally NOT huge online stores that need to drive massive amounts of traffic to their web sites.  For this reason much of the SEO discussion (including search engine firms, large internet marketing campaigns, paid subscription services, etc) is not applicable here. 

So - this is just the basics.

Meta tags are part of the code that belongs in the “head” section of the HTML documents that comprise your web site.  Their function is to identify the file (and the web site) to the browser and the search engines.  The user at their computer doesn’t see them, but the search engines do. 

Normally, you’d have to know something about HTML and modifying web files to insert meta tags, but many web sites and web hosts are making this easy for you, allowing you to do it with a web-based user interface.  I’m not going to go into the nuts and bolts of HTML here - I’m confining my discussion  to what to put in the tags.

Here are the three most talked-about tags.

Title:  This is page title that appears in the top-most bar in the browser.  As such, it should start with a word or phrase that describes each particular page (IE About US).  Since the title tag is used by search engines to index your web site, it should also contain several important keywords (probably not more than six).  Here is the title text for your About Us page.

About BeauCreations Web Design | Web Graphics, Multimedia | Web Design Marietta | Web Site Design

Description:  This should go in the “meta” code for each web page.  It will be used by search engines to describe your web site to users doing a search, and also to test relevance (IE Is your site’s content really about what you say it’s about).  It should be loaded with keywords / phrases (shown here in red, bold), but also succinct and free of “hype”. 

BeauCreations is a Marietta GA based web design company specializing in creative, affordable websites for small businesses and individuals.

Keywords and phrases:  These should go in the “meta” code on each web page, and be used liberally throughout your web site.  Search engines have reduced the use of keywords due to fraud, but they are still important, especially when it comes to online advertising (if you decide to do this in the future, they will be used to target your online audience).  You are not limited to the number of keywords you use, but evidence suggests that search engines only look at about the first 60-80 characters.  Keywords are not case sensitive but they are sensitive to singular v plural. 

Here are some keywords currently used on my web site:

web design

Suzi Beaumont

Suzanne Beaumont

Marietta web design

website design

graphic art

multimedia

web design firm