CHAPTER 3. HEAD SETS THE STAGE 30
But here is my own, anyway. Enjoy.
3.6.1 The Basics
Search engines are trying to help their users find good content. Users come
with a goal. They want to learn about something. They type in some words.
The search engine tries to read their mind based on those words, and tries
to show them relevant websites.
What if our website is truly relevant, perhaps the most relevant of all web-
sites? Do the users get to see our website listed on the first page?
Just as the search engine tries to understand the user, they also try to
understand every website they visit. Including ours.
Ideally they want to understand our website, but that is very difficult. So,
instead, they do the best they can.
(1) They look at our URL. Our domain name is important. Our choice of
folder names and page names is important. Ideally they will be meaningful
to our eventual customer.
(2) They look at our title. This is the small phrase we put between the
up to about 50 characters, and should be meaningful to our eventual cus-
tomer.
Exam Question 34(p.338):For SEO, is title very important?
Required Answer:yes
Exam Question 35(p.338):For SEO, about how many characters of our
title are used?
Acceptable Answer: 50
(3) They look at our meta description. This is a longer phrase we can put in
our head section. It provides the wording that the search engine will show
to customers. They are likely to read it when they try to decide whether to
visit our page or not. It looks like this:
Exam Question 36(p.338):For SEO, is meta description very important?