Tina's FrontPage News
~~Tina
Clarke, AccessFP - FrontPage Resource Centre
Optimizing Your FrontPage Site for Search Engines
If you have not optimized all the pages of your site, it’s not worth
submitting it to the search engines, so lets get busy.
Adding information to META tags is useful for describing your web page; it
can help search engines find and index your page, as well as document
information such as how your page was created and what theme it is using.
However there are other factors that make a difference in getting listed
with
search engines and we will discuss tools to help and methods you can employ.
PAGE RANKING METHODS TO EMPLOY
Methods that can affect page rank (or loading performance), yet give little
or no warning a problem exists.
Missing Meta tag-Description
Missing Meta tag-Keywords
TITLE - missing or blank
TITLE - not first element in <head> section
Missing Image Alt Tag
Missing Image dimension (size) attributes
Are your Page <title> elements out of position?
http://www.anyfrontpage.com/bytes/archives/accessvol1/
issue2.htm
NOTE: Surfers generally only look at the first 10 or 20 results in a search
so it’s important to get a high ranking. It can make a big difference in your
page hits.
META TAGS
To add information to the HTTP header for a page (the information about a
page that is not visible to the site visitor; i.e.: source code), add a
user-defined or system META variable. The NAME or HTTP-EQUIV attribute
declares a variable for the page and the CONTENT attribute assigns a value
to the variable. A META tag supplies information about the page, but does
not affect its appearance.
NB: Meta tag code should be on one continuous line and not break or wrap.
Due to text constrictions of email, example Meta tags may do this; they
should not break in your html code.
~ System META variable
Meta tags that use the HTTP-EQUIV attribute as the name portion of their
name-value pairs supply special instructions to a Web browser, such as an
expiration date or a display-refresh (redirect) value.
EG: <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL=http://accessfp.net/">
http://builder.cnet.com/webbuilding/pages/Authoring/Tagmania/
011000/ss01.html
has some interesting twists on this meta tag.
~ User-defined META variable
Meta tags with a NAME attribute, which do not correspond to HTTP headers,
are used to reflect
property associated with the page.
EG: <meta name="keywords" content="frontpage,tutorials,help,tips">
However, the distinction is a little fuzzy; some agents may interpret tags
such as "keywords" declared as either "name" or as "http-equiv".
THE CUSTOM TAB
The Custom tab displays Meta Tags (system variables and user-defined
variables) that are associated with the active page.
1. To insert Meta tags:
Right click on a page, click on 'Page Properties'
To insert a ‘user-defined’ META variable
Click on the 'Custom' Tab and go to 'User Variables'.
Click on ‘Add’ and in the 'user variable box', under ‘Name’ insert the meta
name, EG: author
Under 'Value' Insert the Meta content, EG: content="Tina Clarke”
Click ok
In the html view this would look like:
<meta name="author" content="Tina Clarke">
To insert a ‘System’ META variable such as HTTP-EQUIV
Click on the 'Custom' Tab and go to 'User Variables'.
Click on ‘Add’ and in the 'user variable box', under ‘Name’ insert the meta
name, EG: reply-to
Under 'Value' Insert the Meta content, EG: content="TinaClarke@accessfp.net”
Click ok
In the html view this would look like:
<meta http-equiv="reply-to" content="TinaClarke@accessfp.net">
2. Dialog Box Options
System Variables (HTTP-EQUIV) and User Variables (user-defined) Meta tags
Name = The name of the Meta tag.
Value = The value to associate with the tag.
Add = Click Add to add a new Meta tag.
Modify = Click Modify to modify the currently selected Meta tag.
Remove = Click Remove to remove the currently selected Meta tag.
FRONTPAGE TOOLS AND ADD-ONS FOR SEARCH ENGINE AND META TAG OPTIMIZATION.
TP_ErrOmi2.2 (FREE)
http://solution-shelf.com
ErrOmi2 is a Microsoft® FrontPage 2000-2002 plug-in utility that helps you
find and correct problems that can reduce page ranking, lower accessibility
compliance and slow page loading. In short, it helps you give your web a
Tune-Up. With its assistance, you can apply important Meta Tags and HTML
attributes consistently across your entire web.
TP_ErrOmi2.2 can deal with all the methods I listed above, plus
more. I recommend it as an essential FrontPage tool.
Jimco Meta 2.0 and No FrontPage Meta (FREE)
http://www.jimcoaddins.com/com.asp
Jimco Meta 2.0 makes it easy to add Meta tags to your FrontPage Web!
Control whether or not the IE6 Image toolbar is displayed on your pages.
Add Keywords and Description tags for search engines.
Add refresh tags to redirect the browser after a specified amount of time.
Add cache-control tags to control the caching of your page in a user's
browser.
Add an Author meta tag to identify you as a page's author.
Control whether or not FrontPage puts its own Meta tags on a page
No FrontPage Meta will remove the GENERATOR and ProgId meta tags when you
save your pages.
NOTE: FrontPage will often add the meta tags back when a page is opened in
FrontPage. Therefore, this add-in is designed to remove the meta tags right
before a page is saved. If you view the source of your page in your Web
browser or view the source in an editor other than FrontPage (such as
Notepad), you will see that the meta tags are indeed gone. For even greater
control of FrontPage's meta tags, get Jimco Meta 2.0!
Office Power (14-day trial)
http://office-power.com/products/downloads/index.htm
SiteTagger 4.0.2
SiteTagger analyzes and prepares your site to ensure all your pages are
ready to be indexed by the Internet's varied search engines. And, at the
same time, this add-in makes your site more accessible to your visitors.
TIP: "Site Promotion Tips," a 16-page eBook can be found in your ActionPack
Professional or MyHelp installation folder.
Meta Tag Maker 2002 (14 Day Trial)
http://websunlimited.com/download_instructions.htm
http://www.websunlimited.com/download/mtm02demo.exe (Direct Download)
Meta Tag Maker 2002 is a fully integrated add-in for FrontPage 2002 that
sets the meta tags used by search engines to index your web pages. Fill in
dialog boxes and have your meta tags automatically generated on your open
web page. Meta Tag Maker checks your entries against predefined standards,
allows you to apply meta tags on multiple web pages in one step, allows you
to suppress SmartTags, and much more!
(Works in both FrontPage 2002 and FrontPage 2000)
WebSite Promotion Suite 2002 (15 day Trials available)
http://accessfp.net/hisoftware.htm
TagGen allows the user to add meta data to their Web documents.
Hi-Verify provides a keyword generator, metadata policy management, and
keyword density analysis.
Hi-Visibility automates the search engine submission process.
Hi-Position is the only search engine position-tracking tool that will
compare your site directly against the competition.
Hi-Stats is a Comprehensive Log Analysis Program!
OTHER TOOLS FOR SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION AND META TAGS
GoodKeyWords (FREE)
http://www.goodkeywords.com/
“Windows software for finding the perfect set of keywords for your web
pages. It uses the tools provided by search engines like GoTo, 7Search,
Direct Hit and Lycos to build a suitable keyword set. Once you are done, a
simple click will get you the required keyword meta tag” Which you can then
use in conjunction with TP_ErrOmi.
FREE on-line META Tag Analyzer
http://www.scrubtheweb.com/abs/meta-check.html
A combination spider and syntax checker.
TAGS TO USE
Title Description and Keywords are the three meta tags that should always
be used. Irrelevant META Tags can be more of a hindrance. Certainly the
FrontPage generated tags are only needed by the FrontPage application to
alter the icons in the folder view to indicate whether one is open or not
and other similar indications. You can get rid of them by using the Jimco No
FrontPage Meta which will remove the GENERATOR and ProgId meta tags when you
save your pages.
http://www.jimcoaddins.com/com.asp
* <title>The name of your site</title>
<title>AccessFP - FrontPage Resource Centre with Ezine, Forum, List
Journal.</title>
* <meta name="description" content="What is this page about?">
<META name="description" content="FrontPage Resource Centre for 97, 98,
2000, 2002 and FrontPage Express (fpe). The biggest collection of FrontPage
sites, themes, templates and addon links and help. Tips, how to's and
tutorials. FrontPage Forums, AnyFrontPage Bytes Ezine, AccessFP list and
Journal. All FREE FrontPage resources and Information.">
* <meta name="keywords" content="What, words, describe, this, page?">
<META name="keywords" content="Microsoft FrontPage,Tips,Help,webmaster
resources,Discussion
forum,Journal,fronpage,fpe,fp,free,addons, Tutorials,98,2000,2002,FPE,FrontPage
Express,tips,how to's,tutorials,help,Add-in's, Third party applications,MS
FP98,addons,free, FP,Frontpage,download,
themes,Image Composer,FAQ,templates,Ezine,list,journal">
Here are a few of the other meta tags that can be added to your head tags.
*
<meta name="author" content="Who made this page?">
<meta name="author" content="Tina Clarke">
*
<meta name="language" content="version of language and the country">
<meta name="language" content="en-uk">
*
<meta name="revisit-after" content="30 days"> This tells the search engine
to come back again and re-index your site every 30 days using this example.
<meta name="revisit-after" content="30 days">
*
<meta name="owner" content="Who owns this page?">
<meta name="owner" content="Tina Clarke">
*
<meta name="copyright" content="When did you make this page? and the name of
webmaster">
<meta name="copyright" content="Copyright© 1999 - 2002 Tina Clarke, All
rights reserved">
*
<meta name="contact_addr" content="who@madethispage.com">
<meta name="contact_addr" content="TinaClarke@accessfp.net">
*
<meta name="rating" content="which audience is this website for?">
<meta name="rating" content="general">
*
<meta name="robots" content="you want all robots to spider your site, don't
you?">
<meta name="robots" content="all">
*
<meta name="distribution" content="you want the site distributed everywhere,
don't you?">
<meta name="distribution" content="global">
*
<meta name="classification" content="what kind of directory heading does
this come under?">
<meta name="classification" content="Web Master Resources">
*
<meta http-equiv="reply-to" content="email@address.co.uk">
<meta http-equiv="reply-to" content="TinaClarke@accessfp.net">
*
<meta http-equiv="Content-Script-Type" content="type"> to specify the
scripting language used.
*
<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css"> to specify the
default style sheet language.
*
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=characterSetName">
to specify the document character set in use on the page.
Apart from the paid listings, which we won’t discuss here, it seems that
there is a small group of sites one should submit to that will show up on
other search engines. You can indeed submit to the others directly but these
listed here are the major search engines.
Google
http://www.google.com/addurl.html
dmoz Open Directory Project
http://dmoz.org/add.html
The two listed above are absolutely essential.
alltheweb/Fast
http://www.alltheweb.com/add_url.php
Ask Jeeves
Send the URL and a brief description of the site via
url@askjeeves.co.uk
(email only submission)
Inktomi
http://submitit.bcentral.com/msnsubmit.htm
LookSmart
http://www.zeal.com/help_tour.jhtml
Lycos
https://secure.lycos.de/luk/service/addasiteCSR.php (The free
option)
Yahoo! Directory
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/
Follow their guidelines exactly to submit your site. (ONLY AFTER OPTIMIZING)
If you do want to submit to more sites here is a listing of many more search
engine add pages.
http://www.2girlsdesign.com/search_engine_list.html
WHAT ELSE CAN YOU DO?
It’s not just your meta tags that you need to tweak, having as clean an html
code as possible is also a must. A little hard for those WYSIWYG users who
have not delved into the html, but a couple of solutions to this is are:
CSE HTML Validator Lite
http://www.htmlvalidator.com/
There is a free version that can help clean up your code.
However for those that like to do everything the FrontPage way check out
this tutorial:
http://anyfrontpage.com/bytes/htmltidy.asp on ‘Integrating
HTML Tidy into Microsoft FrontPage’ as an add-on.
Broken links are something a Search Engine spider doesn’t want to see either,
so do regular maintenance.
See:
http://personal-computer-tutor.com/tina7.htm
Using a text-based navigation especially for large sites is a must, even if
it’s a supplement to what you consider your main navigation such as a drop
down menu.
When making your page, consider the file name carefully. Don’t use uppercase
or spaces. Use an underscore ( _ ) if you need a space in the file name. Try to
reflect the page’s contents that you intend to insert. Changing file names
later can become a pain. These two FREE add-ons from Jimco’s site will help.
http://www.jimcoaddins.com/com.asp
Case Changer 1.5
Case Changer will change all files and folders in your Web to lower case.
This is a lifesaver when working with Unix servers!
Space Replacer
This add-in replaces spaces in file and folder names with an underscore
character.
If those pages are bookmarked, you can end up sending your visitors away so
it’s best to get it right from the beginning. If you do find you have to
change a name, wipe the page and insert a redirect, e.g.
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL=http://accessfp.net/"> (change the
URL to yours) Also insert a link on the page for browsers that won’t
recognize this tag, to your new page. If you think this is not important,
stick a hit counter on the page, and check the results.
When you have built your content, you don’t want to have a page that is too
long (no more than two page lengths) and keep the download of the page to 20
seconds on a 28k modem. You can do this by setting the Reports View.
Go to Tools | Options | Reports View
Set ‘Slow Pages’ to 20
Set ‘Assume connection speed’ to 28.8
Or you can obtain the FREE FrontPage Addon PageWeight
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/release.asp?releaseid=31854
Study your content for keywords to start building your title and meta tags
and proceed step by step.
NOTE: When counting characters include spaces and punctuation, etc.
Next build your TITLE using no more than 60 to100 characters. Try to reduce
the insertion of words such as at, the, and, etc.
Then, incorporate words into your DESCRIPTION using no more than 150 to 250
characters. At this point try to use phrases.
Use words from your description in your KEYWORDS, using no more than
800 to 1024 characters. Try to keep the keywords that are used in your title
and description in as the first few words used, and try to make a phrase out
of them, phrases are preferred before keywords because they narrow down the
volume of sites that will display with any given phrase. This of course
makes for a higher ranking.
Differing authorities suggest using different methods to display the
keywords. Based on research, I use the method of writing keywords like
this: One,two,three using commas and no spaces. Even
spaces and commas count as characters so this gives you many more characters
for your keywords usage.
NOTE: Remember there is no point in inserting keywords that are not used on
the actual page. However it’s crucial that all this matches the content on
the page the tags are on. Don’t use the same word more than three times.
DMOZ - You are allowed to submit only one page to each category
Google - Link popularity is a must especially for Google, which employs a
PageRank (PR), method, so start working on getting linkbacks from other
sites. The more popular the other sites, the better for you.
See this article:
Increase Your Site's Traffic With
Reciprocal Links (August 2002)
http://www.webpromote.com/
Do you have a FrontPage Crafted site? If so, you can submit your site to
‘Crafted with FrontPage’ at:
http://accessfp.net/submit.htm
and the results will appear at
http://accessfp.net/crafted.htm
A linkback is required or the submission will be deleted.
If you have a FrontPage RESOURCE site, you can submit to this address
http://accessfp.net/submitfpresources.htm
Results appear on the same page.
Again, a linkback is required, and in both cases you should email the
webmaster.
If you utilize frames or splash pages or Flash on your home page, think
again. Search Engines don’t like them and, with Flash, can’t see them. See:
http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/frames.html
NOTE: DO NOT take keywords from other sites,
as you would be infringing on their
copyright and this is against the law. See:
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-11-515476.html?legacy=zdnn
Teoma / Ask Jeeves has a comprehensive ‘you can’t do this’ policy and you
would do well to apply that to all the other search engines.
http://ask.ineedhits.com/programterms.asp?n=u
Google is now considered the main search engine and is known for it’s
ethical opinions, so following Google’s lead is the best optimization method
you can achieve. That means no spamming, no same colour text on same colour
background or small fonts. Make sure you include, if possible, a link to the
home page, a site search page, and a site map. No doorway pages, no
redirection, and no cloaking, and no Flash on the homepage and certainly no
frames. Use include pages instead. See
http://personal-computer-tutor.com/tina13.htm for more information.
Try to optimise your homepage and sitemap as these two pages will do a lot
to help your placement include the meta tag <META NAME="revisit-after"
CONTENT="30 Days"> only on those two pages.
It’s a good idea to get your site labelled: e.g.:
<META HTTP-EQUIV="pics-label" CONTENT='(pics-1.1 "http://www.icra.org/ratingsv02.html"
l gen true for "http://accessfp.net" r (cz 1 lz 1 nz 1 oz 1 vz 1) "http://www.rsac.org/ratingsv01.html"
l gen true for "http://accessfp.net" r (n 0 s 0 v 0 l 0))'>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="reply-to" CONTENT="TinaClarke@accessfp.net">
Content Labels generated by ICRA conform to an Internet industry standard
known as PICS - the Platform for Internet Content Selection.
You can learn more about this here:
http://www.icra.org/about/
TAGS TO USE TO DETER ‘SOME’ SEARCH ENGINES LISTING YOUR GRAPHICS
Altavista supports: <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOIMAGEINDEX,NOIMAGECLICK">
NOIMAGEINDEX - prevents the images on the page from being indexed but the
text on the page can still be indexed.
NOIMAGECLICK - prevents the use of links directly to the images, instead
there will only be a link to the page.
Google supports a NOARCHIVE extension to this scheme to request the Google
search engine from caching pages. See the Google FAQ
http://www.google.com/webmasters/3.html#B3
See also the /robots.txt exclusion method.
http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots.html
When you mouse over an image in IE6, a menu pops up with options such as Save,
Print & Email Image. To disable this, include the following meta tag
<META HTTP-EQUIV="imagetoolbar"CONTENT="no">
The important thing to remember about search engine optimization is that
tweaking your site can be more important than your meta tags, though they
are still a necessity, so work on both.
You can also include a robots.txt file on your site that will tell search
engine spiders to ignore folders and to spider the site. You can find out
more about this at:
http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/robots.html
Apart from graphics, if you wish to indicate to a spider that you don’t want
a certain page indexed, insert the following Meta tag.
<meta NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX,FOLLOW">
NOTE: Not all spiders will notice the meta tag and not all spiders will take
notice of the robots.txt file.
If you don’t want your page showing up in the FrontPage Table of
Contents component or Search Page insert an underscore in the file name, like so:
_mypage.htm to prevent
this happening.
Remember, the golden rule is don’t submit without optimizing. Keep following
the latest news about what’s going on (see a listing of Search Engine and
Meta tag resource sites below) and, like doing maintenance on your site, it’s a
chore that has to be done over and over again to keep that ranking high.
Good luck.
SEARCH ENGINE/META TAG RESOURCE LINKS
http://www.bruceclay.com/web_rank.htm
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/
http://www.w3.org/Metadata/Activity.html
http://www.spider-food.net/
http://www.jessett.com/web_sites/search_engines/metatags.shtml
http://www.vancouver-webpages.com/META/
http://www.help4web.net/links/MetaTag.html
http://www.highrankings.com/advisor.htm
Tina Clarke - Microsoft MVP - FrontPage, is
the Webmaster of AccessFP - FrontPage Resource Centre
http://accessfp.net/
and http://addonfp.com
She is also an editor of AnyFrontPageBytes Ezine. Subscribe to the ezine
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AnyFrontPageBytes and
get FREE FrontPage E-Books upon joining. And don't forget to subscribe to get
Weekly FrontPage Tips. Tina is also an artist and the owner of
http://clarke-abstract-art.com
,
