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Today’s Class

Today’s class will focus on SEO – Search Engine Optimisation:

• HTML Meta Tags
• Finding HTML For a Web Page
• Google Search Engine Optimisation Starter Guide

HTML Meta Tags

A powerful way to improve SEO is by adding metadata to a website. Metadata can be added in form of meta tags in the HTML code of a website. The metadata can be used by browsers (how to display content or reload page), search engines (keywords), or other web services.

Use the head section to include your metadata. Look at this link to see how to include it: Head Element With Meta Tags in HTML.

Examples:

• Define keywords for search engines: <meta name=”keywords” content=”HTML, CSS, XML, XHTML, JavaScript”>
• Define a description of your web page: <meta name=”description” content=”Free Web tutorials on HTML and CSS”>
• Define the author of a page: <meta name=”author” content=”Hege Refsnes”>
• Refresh document every 30 seconds: <meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”30″>

Please use W3Schools Tryit!Editor to apply metadata to a HTML. (In class we picked tables without borders.) Click the link before and select from the list of HTML documents. Next apply the Meta Tags to the document in the head section. Follow your teacher’s instructions.

Finding HTML For a Web Page

The HTML code of most websites can be viewed in a web browser. You just want to look for the Source!

The latest version of Internet Explorer lets you access the source by pressing F12 or clicking Tools>Developer Tools from the drop menu. Try this out and find the Meta Data of a website in the HTML code.

Copy the HTML code and save it into a Notepad document. Change the metadata, change the title as well and save the file as a HTML file with the Encoding set as UTF-8 (this shows up as an option when you save the file in Notepad.)

Open the file in your browser and discuss visible changes.

Google Search Engine Optimisation Starter Guide

Download the Google Search Engine Optimisation Guide. Save it into your folder for this class. It is a PDF file that we will use in our learning. We will work in class through the first sections:

• SEO Basics
• Improving Site Structure

If you missed the class try to work through the sections on your own.

NOTE: In class we worked through the first section of SEO Basics:

Create unique, accurate page titles (pages 4 and 5). We discussed examples for page titles for our imaginary website: Juanita School of Spanish (Spanish for Beginners).

See the screen shot below. The ideas in brackets did not comply to Google’s suggestions:

•  Accurately describe the page’s content

•  Create unique title tags for each page

•  Use brief, but descriptive titles

Most of the titles that we brainstormed were too short and not descriptive enough.

Homework

Open the links on page 5 (at the bottom) and read page 6: Make use of the “description” meta tag.

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