In the previous steps (Steps 2 & 3), we looked at planning and strategizing your home. What goes into it and connects to it, or the Basics of SEO and On-page & Off-page SEO as well as involving the architect and interior designer (Including your team).
Now that you have worked out where you want to build your dream home, the next step is to go the actual site with your team, and see where everything will go. You’ll have to decide where you want certain things such as your, fencing, road access, tree planting. Once you’re in the clear then you’re good to go and lay the foundation of your home!
HTML, Coding and Meta tags are the ‘Foundation’ of SEO.
Whatever you create at the backend of your website where all the coding and Meta tags are formulated will reflect on the front-end where your customers will view your website. Just as in building your house, it is very important to lay your foundation on solid ground and soil, so it will stay strong and not fall apart. The same is applicable when it comes to your website, it has to be built in a way that will allow crawling by search engines for ranking and appeal to your customers as well.
Moving straight into …
Step 4: Laying the Foundation (HTML, CMS & Meta Tags).
Now let’s share with you as a business owner one of the ways you can manage your website without the technical know-how… Content Management Systems.
CMS (Content Management Systems) are used by a all sorts and sizes of websites as a means of managing their website content. CMS are user-friendly and do not require one to have any technical knowledge in order to use them. The software stores every piece of content on your site, your images, videos, documents etc…. This basically is your ‘house structure’, your walls, roof, windows etc… the structure that makes your house pretty! .i.e. your website.
The great thing about Customer Management systems is you can use them for features such as blogging, news, shopping (catalogues) and if you have used Microsoft Excel before then you’re pretty much half way there! If your website is going to be regularly updated with more than one user editing it, then you’d want to consider having a CMS to manage your website.
Some of well-known CMS include:
– WordPress: WordPress is a free blogging tool and Content-Management System which is based on PHP and MySQL. The MySQL feature allows users to manipulate and customise functions without having any knowledge of HTML or PHP, technicalities are totally minimal here. It’s the most popular CMS on the web and used by over 60 million websites!
– Drupal: Drupal just like Word Press is also free, the only difference is Drupal is popular amongst Web Developers which means that it’s a bit difficult to understand for someone without PHP or HTML knowledge. It has features such as image galleries, custom navigation menus, analytical tools and ecommerce features as well.
– Joomla: The second biggest CMS after WordPress, Joomla is also popular amongst web users. It’s mainly used for web content publishing. Joomla includes features such as caching, RSS feeds, news flashes, blogs, polls, search, printable page versions… It’s full of so many useful features. And the great thing about it is its open-source which means it’s absolutely free!
– TYPOlight: TYPOlight now known as Contao is an open-source CMS. It provides one with a high security information system that is user friendly to an extent that people with disabilities can use the system. Amongst other features it has advanced editing features, provides great website structure, newsletter built-in module, news and blogging feature, easy live update, it also has Ajax and PHP5. So basically there’s something for everyone. Whether you’re at beginner or expert level.
– Expression Engine: Expression Engine is partially free but to get the full version of the content management system you have to pay a fee. The great thing about this system is the fact that it provides users with a ‘real-time’ experience with the whole concept of channels behind their CMS. So if you want a spectacular CMS at a price, Expression Engine isn’t a bad choice at all.
We mentioned Content Management Systems to provide you with a “do it yourself” option, let’s take a look at what coding and HTML is about and why it is important to have as a foundation to your website.
What is HTML?
HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) is markup language or codes used in creating webpages and information which can be seen on the internet (web browser). HTML gives you things like how your website is going to be structured, navigated, how the colour fits with the fonts and most importantly whether the coding will work well on mobile too. Let’s show you an example of HTML language:
What is a Meta tag?
A Meta Tag is a HTML tag which provides information about a webpage. Meta tags do not affect the way in which a webpage is created or its structure. What they do instead is give information for instance on who the author of the webpage is, what the webpage is about, keywords inserted in the webpage amongst other elements that go into webpage Meta tags.
Now that you understand the difference between the 2, let us share with you what the different Meta tags are and why websites use HTML and Meta tags.
Imagine a store having a sale without putting up any signs that indicate there’s a cut in the pricing of their items. Seriously, how people to know there’s a sale happening! The same goes for Meta tags. They are important as they lead customers to your website.
Why do websites use HTML and Meta Tags?
Websites use Meta Tags to attract traffic to their websites. Just like the store sale example, something needs to lure customers to visit your website. Although Meta tags no longer rank with search engines, they provide your customers and search engines an idea on what you do and your product offering.
What are the different types of Meta tags?
There are quite a number of them but we’ll share with you 10 of the most used Meta tags. Here we go…
A Content Meta tag:
A content Meta tag describes the type of content being displayed and the charset (code) of the webpage and how everything should be put together.
An Author Meta tag:
This tag described who the author of the page is.
Description tag:
A description tag is a well-known one and is found in every webpage. It pretty much describes what the webpage is about and its content as well. It’s usually between 150 and 160 characters long.
Keywords Meta tag:
The keyword Meta tag describes the main words that are included in the content .e.g. cake, chocolate, baking, hunger, satisfaction.
Robots Meta tag:
This tag lets search engine robots know what pages to index. For example:
There are certain pages you want to be ranked for and others that you’d rather not let a spider crawl through. Search engines provide you the option of having spiders skip certain webpages on your site or to index all of it. It’s important to have this Meta tag as search bots rank every webpage they come across. It’s important to have this Meta tag as spiders rank every webpage they come across. So if for instance you don’t want a certain page ranked and you don’t alert search bots about it then they will not only rank you for that page but do so unfavourably
The generator Meta tag:
This Meta tag describes the type of software used to develop the website.
The re-visit Meta tag:
The re-visit lets search engine robots know when to index the website again.
Publisher Meta tag
The publisher Meta tag describes the publisher of the webpage.
The Audience Meta tag:
Describes the age restriction of persons to view the webpage or site.
No-cache Meta tag
This tag lets the browse know that it should not cache the webpage. The latest information or session is displayed to the user.
So, why did Google and all the other search engines ban ‘keywords meta tags’ as a ranking factor?
About a decade ago Google decided to no longer use Meta tags as a ranking factor, as websites were stuffing keywords into their webpages in the hope of ranking with search engines. Everything then was about On-page SEO, keywords ranked highly until search engines discovered what websites were doing.
Although there are other advanced options, just remember that with websites it’s better to design them using HTML5 and a CMS as it makes it easier for search engines to crawl through your website. You may not be a web developer, but by all means try to understand what happens at the back-end of your website and not only the front end as Meta tags are still an important element of SEO to know. Even without any ranking powers!
That takes care of Step Four… In five we’ll be finishing off the interior and exterior of our house (Link Building & Social Media) it’s going to be quite messy and dirty. Better come prepared!
