Hantsweb Technical Guidelines

Improving your web pages ranking within a search engine

A visitor using a search engine will use keywords to find the web site they are looking for.  These keywords are an important way to improve your web pages chances of being found in the top ten results in a search engine. To ensure you choose the correct keywords think about the most relevant words - words that you think a visitor would use to find the content of your pages.  Using these keywords within the following steps will assist in improving your pages ranking within search engines results.

META tags

META tags are only visible in the HTML code of web pages, but many search engines use them to search for appropriate web pages.  For full instructions on how to insert META tags to your pages please look at our guidelines. CAUTION: META tags should only be used for your home page or gateway pages, they should not be applied to your whole collection.

Page titles

Every page on your web site should have a unique and meaningful page title.  The page title refers to the text that appears in the blue bar at the top of your browser. Most search engines will use this title to compile their results pages. Please ensure this is no longer than than 8 words as some titles can be cut short on a search engine results page. 

Headings

Using the correct header styles found in the style drop down menu on the toolbar to create headings on your webpage will help search engines find information in your page.  Some search engines search the html code of the webpage and pick out headings (heading 1, heading 2 etc) which have been correctly referenced.

Text

Some search engines also look at the first 200 words of text.  Adding keywords within this area will be picked up by search engines.
CAUTION: Please ensure that you use your keywords in a sensible manner - 'spamming' can cause your pages to be demoted or removed entirely from a search engine.

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