This page discusses - Writing to be located through the Search Engine

Writing to be located through the Search Engine

The majority of web users depend upon search engines of all kind to locate and navigate web pages. While writing text material for the web you need to concentrate on the fact that when a user performs a search he should immediately know how the page that has opened up connects to his query.

You should always highlight the keywords and there should always be a summary at the beginning, also all requirements should be met for making your page more scannable. Each page should possibly contain all the terms of query related to the content of the page.

All important words should be listed under a keywords meta-tag. This meta- tag should also contain all possible synonyms too even those which might not be present in the body of the text. Also keep in mind the generic terms used by the customers or other competing companies to describe the page and use them too.

The use of controlled vocabulary should be done to add keywords to the meta-tags for the pages. It is important to have a list of common terms pertaining to your subject area and the related keywords should be added to the related pages. However do not add peripherally related keywords to the tag. Only keywords containing the main topic of the page should be added.

It is important to add a <TITLE> tag to each page. Also a title text of a single line having no more than 60 characters is adequate for each page. Also ensure that the first 40 characters of the title are descriptive of the topic of the page. This is because titles can be often truncated in the navigation menus.

This further requires that you make the first word in the title the precise and most important descriptor of the page. This is a common tendency in users to scan down long lists of titles to select the required pages. It is not good to begin a title with a generic term or an article this is because the title needs to make sense even when completely out of context too.

To differentiate between pages it is always advisable to give different titles to different pages. And if the pages have similar information then there should be at the end an explanatory note regarding the difference between two pages. Titles should not and cannot contain any markups or highlighting and should advisably be written in mixed case.

Although in a rare instance an uppercase can be used for a particular word in the title but it should not be in any condition the first word. For it being the first word is sufficient enough. To let the users know at a glance what the page is all about, it is always better to have a summary of the page in a description Meta –tag. This will be beneficial because some search engines show this summary below the title.

However the shorter the sweeter the description should not exceed 150 characters the approximate length of a normal SMS. Though this summary will in most cases appear along with the title but it should be so written that if read out of context it should make complete sense.

Always keeping user interest in mind the description should tell them instantly what the whole page is about and whether it is of any relevance to them or not. Hyperbole or promotional language is strictly not for this summary for this can simply make the user skip from your link to another.

Thus writing a web page may although seem easy and similar to a printed document but is far more complicated and requires expertise.