Are these good? <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <title>Web Design, Marketing/SEO | Professional web site design done right</title> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" href="http://www.rtdesigngroup.com" /> <META NAME="DESCRIPTION" content="We offer professional and affordable web site design,web development,and internet marketing/SEO. We have an experienced design,technical and marketing team to ready to serve you."> <META NAME="KEYWORDS" content="web site design,affordable web site design,web design,web site hosting,web hosting,programming,promotion,internet marketing,web design,seo,search engine optimization,VOIP,PBX"> <META NAME="Copyright" content="RTDesignGroup.com"> <META HTTP-EQUIV="content-language" content="EN"> <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOODP"> <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="index,follow" /> <link href="styles/rt.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> <script type="text/javascript" src="scripts/includes/lib/prototype.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="scripts/includes/lib/scriptaculous.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="scripts/includes/modalbox.js"></script> <link rel="stylesheet" href="styles/modalbox.css" type="text/css" media="screen" /> <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="scripts/rt.js"></script> Any help is appreciated! Thanks, -C
You need to focus your efforts a bit more. For example, in your title you are apprently trying to optimize for the keywords "Web Design," "Marketing," and "SEO." You're never going to rank for all of those with a single page. I suggest choosing a 3 to 5 word phrase for each page of your site that has overlapping key phrases and possibly include your own name for branding. For example, this page might be better with something like: "Professional Web Site Design - RTDesignGroup.com" Keep your main key phrases toward the beginning of each tag and try to vary them a bit throughout the page (i.e. web site, website). That's the basic idea anyway. The keyword tag is only read by Yahoo, Ask, and maybe some smaller engines, and even on those it doesn't carry much weight. Good page titles can make a big difference though. FWIW, I would definitely make sure you work out these kind of details before you charge anyone for SEO work
... and learn to write clean semantic markup first. Dan's in line ahead of me on this one I think so I'll skip the usual line-by-line rip to shreds - but for 'SEO' or even modern coding practices, it's in the 'chuck it and start over' department.
What you see below is invalid HTML since you are mixing both HTML and XHTML syntax in the same Web page. You declared an HTML 4.01 Transitional DOCTYPE, which lets you use ONLY HTML (and not XHTML). The good thing about a Transitional DOCTYPE is that it lets you "transition" to a clean, minimal, semantic and strict method of authoring Web pages and sites while also allowing them to validate at the same time. But that's not the point of this thread, so let's get right to the meat and potatoes, shall we? Ok, there's the complete code as it is now. Let's start from the top, shall we? Is "Web Design, Marketing/SEO" the title of the Web page? Is "Professional web site design done right" the name of your company? Of course not. So replace it. It should look something like this: (Web Page Title) | RT Design Group Code (markup): Of course the home page is different, and in your case you'll want to showcase what your company does, so this would be more appropriate. It allows you to place some keywords in while still retaining your brand. <title>Professional Web Site Design, Marketing and SEO Done Right | RT Design Group</title> Code (markup): It's still rather bulky, and the keywords won't be worth as much as they would be if you had fewer keywords, but it does explain what your company does to the searcher (since the META description tag is not guaranteed to be used by the search engines in all cases) so I'll consider it acceptable here (even though I would personally reduce that to "Web Site Design, Marketing and SEO Done Right | RT Design Group" but that's just me). The first is required (since it declares which encoding you're using), while the latter is nice to have, but ditch the closing slash on the <link> tag. Also, from a structural point of view, you should also declare the encoding of the stylesheet as well. Here's how I'd re-write that. <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css"> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" href="http://www.rtdesigngroup.com"> Code (markup): The META description tag has two main purposes. The first (and most important from a semantic point of view) is to provide the most accurate, clear, and concise description of the page possible. The other purpose is to make the person browsing the search results to "click that link" by having an "actionable" META description. Your META tag for the home page does NEITHER. Also don't forget that the META description tag is unique to each page, so each and every page of your site should have a unique description. I'd go with something like this instead (bear in mind this is only an example). <meta name="description" content="Take your Web site to the next level with RT Design Group. Our experienced design, technical and marketing teams offer professional Web site design and development, internet marketing and search engine optimization services at prices you can afford."> Code (markup): What the hell is this? Just as your META description should accurately describe what the page is about, so should the keywords match the content on the page. These keywords are nowhere on the home page, and rarely show up elsewhere on the site anyway. Get rid of them and replace them with keywords that DO appear on your pages. And don't repeat your keywords either. Also, like the META description tag, each page should have its own keywords, so don't repeat what's on the home page because it won't help you one iota. This should work better for you. <meta name="keywords" content="affordable web site design, web development, web site hosting, internet marketing, search engine optimization, seo"> Code (markup): Just make sure you tailor your META keywords tag to each page of your site (as I said earlier). You should also consider adding actual content to your pages as well since all four of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask.com) will pay more attention to what's on the page than in the META tags anyway. You don't need these; get rid of them. If you feel a pressing need, you can keep the copyright, but I wouldn't. This is only useful if some hair-brained Open Directory Project editor listed your site in the directory and gave it an inaccurate description. If your site doesn't fit that description, you can safely get rid of this as well. (A special note about ODP - submitting your site to the directory is like shooting a bottle rocket; fire and forget. You only need to submit your site once; if you submit it more than once you won't be listed. Period. End of story.) This is the default behavior of search engines, so get rid of this. The link to the stylesheet can go right below the Content-Style-Type META tag. You should also state which media type can use it as well. As for the JavaScript, I understand that libraries are becoming the norm these days, but you should really look into cutting back, especially since CSS (when used properly) can handle a lot of the tasks that JavaScript is commonly used for. Not only that, but I like having all my scripts (which is zero to however many I need for a particular site - and I don't even use the language) run from a single library.js file anyway. Anything else is just code bloat and is best done without. All in all, here's how the head section of your site's home page should look: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <html lang="en"> <head> <title>Professional Web Site Design, Marketing and SEO Done Right | RT Design Group</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css"> <meta name="description" content="Take your Web site to the next level with RT Design Group. Our experienced design, technical and marketing teams offer professional Web site design and development, internet marketing and search engine optimization services at prices you can afford."> <meta name="keywords" content="affordable web site design, web development, web site hosting, internet marketing, search engine optimization, seo"> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="styles/rt.css" media="screen,projection"> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" href="http://www.rtdesigngroup.com"> <script type="text/javascript" src="scripts/includes/lib/prototype.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="scripts/includes/lib/scriptaculous.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="scripts/includes/modalbox.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="scripts/rt.js"></script> </head> Code (markup): If you can cut down on the library use (PICK ONE ALREADY!!!) you should have no trouble using just one or two script calls in your page. As deathshadow aluded to though, your site does have other major problems that will prevent this from ranking well, though those tend to be more in the "Web development" arena than pure SEO (but then again, pure SEO is an oxymoron to begin with...).
Does everyone agree that dans tags that he made for me are ok? : <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <html lang="en"> <head> <title>Professional Web Site Design, Marketing and SEO Done Right | RT Design Group</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css"> <meta name="description" content="Take your Web site to the next level with RT Design Group. Our experienced design, technical and marketing teams offer professional Web site design and development, internet marketing and search engine optimization services at prices you can afford."> <meta name="keywords" content="affordable web site design, web development, web site hosting, internet marketing, search engine optimization, seo"> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="styles/rt.css" media="screen,projection"> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" href="http://www.rtdesigngroup.com"> <script type="text/javascript" src="scripts/includes/lib/prototype.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="scripts/includes/lib/scriptaculous.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="scripts/includes/modalbox.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="scripts/rt.js"></script> </head> Please let me know
Should the titles of pages be different for each page. Should there be keywords in each page title or just the main page? For example my page reserveaspotinheaven DOT com i'm trying to redo my titles first, but am not sure what to do. I would love to come up in a search for gifts but i'm not sure how likley that is.
Yes, the title of each page should be unique to that page. Which is why I used (Web Page Title) | (Web Site Name) as a reference in my earlier post. "Web Page Title" would be the title of that particular page, while "Web Site Name" would be the name of the Web site. The pipe just acts as a delimiter to keep them separated (since most browsers use the dash to separate the title from the browser name).
I was wondering that myself - I prefer the dash because it matches what the browsers all use. Sometimes in the little things we all have our own quirks I guess...
Can i use that meta tag as a template and just substitute the description,title and keywords? Is this ok?
Mainly a personal preference. I'm planning on conducting some serious usability testing to see if it makes a difference or not eventually (once I get around to it). Quirks? What are those? What do you mean by "use... as a template" and "substitute the description, title and keywords"?