There is nothing more important for search engine optimization (SEO) than the actual words on each and every page. That being said, there are three things you can do right now to make your pages more search engine friendly. Every page of a site should have “meta tags” – title, description and keywords. Ensuring the meta tags are strong and support the copy on each page goes a long way with search engines.

Page Title (65 chars with spaces)
The page title is the copy that you provide in your title tag and appears at the very top of the browser window. When someone bookmarks a page, it is also becomes the name of the bookmark. And when a search engine or directory “crawls” the site, it is generally what will show up on the search results listing as the main link for the page. Generally, it’s best to just use the subject of the page and not include the company name. But if the company name must be a part of the title tag, put it at the end.

Meta Description (150 chars with spaces)
The meta description should describe the content of the page, again without the company name if possible. Try to include key phrases from the page’s copy. If you try to keep the copy on the page to one main idea, this should be a lot easier to achieve. Depending on the search engine or directory, this is often also what shows up in the search results listing as the extra text under the main link for the page.

Meta Keywords (at least 10-15 keywords/phrases per page)
Meta keywords are words or phrases that you expect people to use when they’re looking for the page. At minimum, the keywords/phrases should be relevant to the content on the page, then to the section it’s in, and finally to the site itself. Try to use as many words as you can think of that a searcher would use. There are tools to help you with this that Will Newman wrote about earlier. If at all possible, those main keywords/phrases should also be in the first paragraph of the page. Be sure to put the most important keywords/phrases at the beginning of the list, and the least important (like the company name) at the end of the list.

Nothing takes the place of strong, relevant copy that a searcher wants to find. But combining that copy with equally strong meta tags that support the copy will go a long way in optimizing a site for search engines.

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