Things that help the look and your ranking

[janeth]

There are two tags that a lot of people seem to forget about when building a website that can both help the look of your site and also help your ranking in the search engines.

HEADING TAGS

A lot of times when people are building web pages they use [b] tags and <font size=> tags to show importance for the page header or certain sentences they want to stand out. Instead of using these you should use <h> tags instead. There are 5 different <h> tags from 1 to 5.
The reason you should use these is that the search engines see different text as more important then other text. The text that the search engines see as more important is the text used in the <h> tags. So it is important that you try and use your key words in the <h> tags.

TITLE ATTRIBUTE

Everyone would use this tag if for no other reason just to be nice.
The tag looks like this
Web Site Design*

Most people never use this attribute. The reason you should use it is simple: It's there for the blind. Speech browsers read the title attributes aloud, so people that can not see know what the page is about.

It also has the benefit of adding search engine related content. The terms you use should be relevant to your site helping you get your key words in the "title". The search engines a long with everything else looks to see if your website was designed right. This is just one more step in getting it done that way. Every little bit helps and this could be the very thing you need to move above your competition.

Do you know of more tags that will help your ranking in the search engines?

[sudhani]

Thanx for the info Janet ...

Using table summaries also help us with ranking at the same time it provides us the info when we need to review / redo our page...

[jackson992]

Don't forget alt tags for images

[sudhani]

Here .. Are we talking about "repeating" the key words certain number of times so that the craweler treats the repetetion as relavant but not as a spam?

What's your experience in whats the number of times a key phrase can be repeated in a page in order to get a high PR?

[jackson992]

Keyword density has nothing to do with PR

It has to do with search engine ranking:)

[TheWebDoctor(tm)]

I'm not sure which book or group of standards Janeth was reviewing when she cited that there are only 5 sizes of heading tags, but there are actually six.

H1 through H6 and each having a level of importance decending as the value of the number increases. So, H1 is more important that H2 and so forth.

Title Attributes and Table Summaries are there as accessibility features just like the Alt Attributes. However, I have not seen a web site's placement increase due to the use of those two elements. Actually, I've seen the reverse.

The Title Attributes and Table Summaries are considered HTML elements and have very little value for the search engines. Conversely, the Alt Attribute has value because it gives the search engines a text value of the image.

However, I have seen sites with navigation buttons fall short of those that use text for the link. Sites that use JavaScript/JScript for navigation typically fall short of those that do not.

I hope this helps everyone.

[sudhani]

Title Attributes and Table Summaries are there as accessibility features just like the Alt Attributes. However, I have not seen a web site's placement increase due to the use of those two elements. Actually, I've seen the reverse.

Can you still remember where u have seen this reverse case?

That could be because of some other factors rather than these.

[janeth]

TheWebDoctor(tm) wrote:

I'm not sure which book or group of standards Janeth was reviewing when she cited that there are only 5 sizes of heading tags, but there are actually six.

You can neat pick anything. Since there is nothing that says how much weight Google puts on the <h> tags I just did not see the need to put the <h6> tag. I figured if you loose a little with each tag by the time you get there it may be like linking to a pr1 site with a 100 out going links.

TheWebDoctor(tm) wrote:

Title Attributes and Table Summaries are there as accessibility features just like the Alt Attributes. However, I have not seen a web site's placement increase due to the use of those two elements. Actually, I've seen the reverse.

A lot of times before I post something I try it on my on site. We have around 70 key words we are ranked in the top 20 on Google for and we try to keep up with those words from week to week after we make different changes to our site.

But as sudhani pointed out there is so much going on it is hard to keep track of exactly what makes a site go up or down. A website you have linked to may go out of business and your rank drops. Or a website may go up in rank. There are just so many things. I find it amazing that you could tell this was the one thing that made this site drop in rank.
[/b]

[Black Knight]

TheWebDoctor(tm) wrote:

I'm not sure which book or group of standards Janeth was reviewing when she cited that there are only 5 sizes of heading tags, but there are actually six.

You can neat pick anything. Since there is nothing that says how much weight Google puts on the <h> tags I just did not see the need to put the <h6> tag.

I didn't think TheWebDoctor was 'nit picking' in any way in correcting something that had been incorrectly stated.

There are more levels of <H> tags than you stated. If you are going to give information, it is always important that it should not be misinformation. There are plenty of misinformation, half-facts, and outright myths about SEO, surely the whole point of this forum is as a place to avoid all that, and get the full picture, even if it takes many posts, and many participants, to build that whole picture up.

[janeth]

Hi Black Knight,
Maybe you did not see the reason I did not give all of the <h> tags. When I post should I get you and TheWebDoctor to read over everything first.

I gave the most important <h> tags. I did not see the reason to list the <h6> tag.

I'm so sorry I do not feel like it helps enough to list it.