When it comes to designing SEO-friendly web pages, it’s all about creating a powerful SEO head section. The HTML head is what will make you or break you in the search engines, especially if you don’t follow SEO guidelines.

The Basics of HTML Head

Document type definition (DTD statement)
This is the first tag on your web page, and helps load and index pages faster. It helps spiders efficiently “deep crawl” your pages. Make sure you use the correct tag.

Software such as Dreamweaver automatically inserts the proper tags. If you are editing older pages, you will need to manually insert the correct tag. Consult with the HTML validator at W3C, or consult with a web designer for more information.

Character Set Tag
SEO gurus recommend listing the character set tag before the title tag. The character set tag displays text character in browsers.

Title Tag
The title tag is very important – you need to grab visitors’ attention IMMEDIATELY. The Title tag is displayed at the top of the browser’s window and displays text in search results. You want to stir their emotions with titles and create curiosity so your site will get those CLICKS!

The SEO standard for title tags is 65 characters or less. Remember to be succinct when writing title tags – do not stuff with too many keywords (looks unnatural and will get you booted out of search engines).

Meta Description Tag
Meta description tags work with the title to attract visitors to your pages. The standard SEO rule is to keep your meta descriptions to 150 characters or less.

You should spend the same amount of time and effort creating powerful meta descriptions just like you would with creating your ads (and titles tags!)

Remember your call to action and work in that “offer” to boost click rates.
Don’t be lazy – if you don’t include meta description tags, search engines automatically use snippets of your copy text as your description tag. This isn’t good SEO practice!

Meta Keywords Tag
It’s still recommended by SEO experts to utilize meta keywords tags. Keep keywords to a minimum (6-8 keyword phrases). Leave out your money phrases. Keep keywords general.

If you are too specific, your competitors will scrape your content. A powerful keyword list can be built VERY quickly that way! Don’t spend all that time researching keywords just to give them away.

Keyword phrase you use in your meta keywords tag need to be used in your body content.

Meta Robots Tag
Meta Robots Tags allows content to be kept out of search engines in the following ways:

•    <META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOINDEX, FOLLOW”>
Pages aren’t indexed but still followed.

•    <META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”INDEX, NOFOLLOW”>
Pages are indexed but not followed.

•    <META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW”>
Pages are not indexed or followed.

Meta Author Tag and Image Toolbar Tag (Optional)
The Meta author tag isn’t a SEO requirement. It places your name on your home page (make sure to follow WAI validation).

The Meta image toolbar tag isn’t always used, but is extremely useful if you have large images on page. It also makes your site look cleaner. The meta image toolbar tag is recommended for images with a height/width greater than 100 pixels.

XML Mapsite Verification Tag (Google)
Google’s Sitemap is the best way to get crawled by spiders. It allows your pages to be easily found and indexed.

Tips and Tricks – How to Create Dynamic Meta Tags
•    If you use more than 65 characters in your titles, Google automatically displays ellipses which drops click-through rates to 9% fewer compared to titles WITHOUT ellipses.

•    Ask questions, use active verbs and list exactly what visitors will receive  (body content follows up by answering questions and providing further information)

•    Utilize unconventional techniques– make meta tags LOOK different so will people are curious to click on it (use a quote, etc).

•    Don’t keyword stuff. Do NOT use keywords of competitors’ products or brands (you could risk a lawsuit!) Keep keywords to 6-8 phrases minimum.

•    Avoid hype in meta-descriptions – limit characters to 150 and use 2-3 sentences for your hook.

Don’t Forget to Subscribe by RSS or Email:

In the past, Google has been unable to extract content such as links and text from SWF (Flash) files. This has posed a big hassle for both web designers and search engine users.

As a result, flash-based content hasn’t been picked up by Google’s search engine. Designers had to work around the issues so Flash pages could actually be indexed and ranked in Google.  Although, it still wasn’t a guaranteed solution that indexing would work for Flash pages. For users, it was still difficult to match viable queries in Google because of these same indexing issues.

Google’s Improvements
Even Google wasn’t on board in the past with Flash files and actually warned against Flash sites in their “Help” section. But they are singing a different algorithm tune now. Yes, Google had a brainstorm – they can now index Flash content in their searches. Good news for both web designers and Google users.

According to Google, they beefed up their algorithms so they are “less error prone.” They teamed up with Adobe to help them come up a better solution. Adobe’s Flash technology now “reads” Flash files allowing it to pull texts and links better – this helps indexing and rankings. Flash gadgets (buttons and menus) are better indexed now.

So is this the much-needed FIX that web designers and users have been searching for with Flash sites? NO, it’s not a fool-proof solution!

Limitations with Flash Content Indexing
Google is still working out the bugs and there are still limitations associated with indexing Flash content.

• Googlebot has issues with JavaScript. If the Flash page loads via JavaScript, Google doesn’t always recognize Flash files and then it can’t index the site.

• Can’t attach external resources from Flash page. If your page loads multiple XML and HTML files, files will be indexed individually. Google doesn’t recognize these files as part of your Flash content.

• Google indexing bumps out Flash pages in bidirectional languages such as Hebrew and Arabic.

SEO and HTML – Choose Wisely
From the SEO perspective, HTML is still your best bet when designing websites. If you want a quick fix, then Flash can do the job especially if you don’t want to revamp your entire website. However, if you want to see long-term, dynamic ranking results then stick with HTML when you give your site an overhaul.
The key to HTML is that designers need to remember SEO guidelines – poorly coded HTML will mess up your search engine rankings. A validated HTML website is a good thing to have!

HTML Tips – Clean Up Your Code
If you are making over your website, clean out that bad code. Bad code can hurt your site with search engines in several ways.

• Search engines look for relevant terms in HTML components within a page. If you have mistakes or errors, you will mess up search engine spiders and they will pass over your site or you’ll lose your ranking in search engines.

• Bad code can also disrupt browsers’ functions and pages may not be viewed correctly by users