SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)

ON PAGE ELEMENTS  

HIDDEN ELEMENTS

HTML Elements/ Meta Tags/ Robot.txt

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), is the most popular  markup language for authoring web pages. The language is written in the form of labels called tags.  By denoting certain text elements as headings, paragraphs, lists, HTML describes the structure of text-based information in a web document. HTML  supplements content with interactive forms, embedded images, and other objects which can help improve a sites appearance.   HTML can also describe the appearance and semantics of a document, and often includes embedded scripting language code which can affect and steer the behavior of web browsers and other HTML processors.

Some tags are specifically included to mediate the behavior of search engines.  Meta tags provide information that help search engines categorize them correctly. They are inserted into the source code of the  document, but are  not  visible to a user visiting the website.

Meta tags are especially attractive to  search engine optimization strategists.  SEO professionals employ a variety of  methods related to these tags with the aim of increasing a websites search engine ranking. In the beginning, search engines relied heavily on meta data to  categorize a web page. Webmasters were quick to realize the importance of having proper meta elements. These elements were directly responsible for how well their pages ranked and how much traffic their sites received.

As companies realized the importance of internet marketing and web traffic, consultants were brought in who were trained in how search engines perceive a web site. SEO consultants used a variety of techniques  to improve page ranking for their clients.  The techniques to date are endless and the field is ever burgeoning with invention.  

Today, meta elements are far less effective as a tool to increase page ranking.  Search engine robots have become  more sophisticated in attempts to thwart certain optimization techniques. This is due in part to the endless re-occurrence  of meta elements (keyword stuffing) and unscrupulous attempts by SEO consultants to circumvent the algorithms used by search engines. 

Major search engines, like Google, use  robots that quantify  factors such as  volume of relevant  incoming links, quantity and quality of content, technical precision of source code, spelling, broken hyperlinks,  time within website, page views, revisits, click-through, technical user-features, uniqueness, redundancy, relevance, advertising revenue yield, freshness, geography, language, volume and consistency of searches and viewer traffic  to name a few.  In  fact, Google has been reported to have over 150 elements in its search algorithm.