For online marketing, whether faith and family or otherwise, how well your website ranks on the search engine results page (SERP) matters greatly.

Efforts to make your website rank well is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Proper tagging of the right key phrases is crucial to SEO.

Extremely important areas of focus are the Page Title, Meta Description, Headings, Paragraphs, Webpage URL, & Links.

Page Title

The html code for page title is <title>Your Title</title>.

Your title should contain your main keywords. Don’t have a page title that only contains the name of your organization, especially if the name does not contain your keywords.

FXCM is a forex broker. The title of its main page is “Forex | currency trading | forex trading | forex broker”. It doesn’t even have the name of their organization; instead, it contains four key phrases.

The following is the Google rank of FXCM in June 2009 for those four key phrases:

Forex	#2
currency trading	#1
forex trading	#4
forex broker	#4

If you don’t want to be that extreme, then add your keywords after the name of your organization.

For example, “XYZ Corp – Keyword1, Keyword2” or “XYZ Corp. Sentence Containing Keywords.”

Finally, you may want to have unique names for your various webpages.

In other words, not every single page needs to have the same title as your main page. You may want to pick titles unique to the contents of your individual pages.

Meta Description

The html code for meta description is <meta name="description" content="Description for your website" />.

Meta description isn’t displayed on the webpage. Instead, it describes the webpage to search engines.

It should contain your key phrases.

Headings

The html code of heading is <h1>Your Heading</h1>.

Headings are highlighted texts on your webpage. It’s important that the headings of your webpage contain your keywords.

Related to headings are your bolded and italicized words. In short, do not use <b> or <i> for your key phrases. Use <strong> and <em>.

Paragraphs

The html code for paragraph is <p>Your paragraph</p>.

For blocks of texts on your webpage, you can tag them with the paragraph tag.

Search engines pay special attention to the first sentence of your first paragraph. It’s good if you place your key phrases there.

URL

URL is your web address.

If possible, when you register your domain name, try to place your key phrases in there!

I googled “marketing.” The following are the URL’s of the top results.

1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing

2. managementhelp.org/mrktng/mrktng.htm

3. www.marketingpower.com

4. marketing.about.com

5. www.knowthis.com

6. www.marketing.com

7. www.entrepreneur.com/marketing

8. marketing.org

9. www.mmm-online.com

10. www.marketingprofs.com

“Marketing” appears in the URL of 7 of these webpages.

Notice that if you cannot get your keyword in the domain name, you can always create a page with the keyword in the title.

For example, even though “marketing” doesn’t appear in www.entrepreneur.com, it does appear in the URL of their webpage www.entrepreneur.com/marketing.

Links

The html code for links is <a href="URL of the Link"> Link label </a>.

For the link labels, don’t use phrases like “click me” or “learn more,” unless you want to rank high for the words “click,” “me,” “learn,” and “more.”

Instead, include your key phrases in the link labels.

Other Areas

There are other areas of tagging that also matter.

For <table>, put key phrases in the attribute summary.

For <img>, put key phrases in the attribute alt.

Put key phrases in meta keywords.

Use <acronym> tag if your keywords are in an acronym.

For example, your keywords are” Christian” and “Children”. For your first heading, you have CCF, which stands for Christian Children’s Fund.

Code <acronym title=”Christian Children’s Fund”>CCF</acronym> to rank high for “Christian” and “Children.”

Please note that the tag “acronym” and “abbr” both work for this situation, and that in the future one of them may be discontinued. Please research this topic before using either one.

Final Words

Effective appearance of key phrases with the right tags around them is important for SEO. This is especially true for the smaller non-google search engines that rely less on links .

When implementing these suggestions, do not be too overzealous. If the key phrases appear everywhere, then search engines may view your website as spam.

Design your website with effective tagging and key phrase placement in mind, but still make sure that the website is user-friendly and sensible.

For questions and comments regarding this article, online advertising, the Faith & Family audience, or Faithadnet, do not hesitate to contact us at marketing@faithadnet.com.