This illustration is taken from the actual source code for a real web site. However, it’s difficult to see
exactly how the title tag comes between the opening and closing head tags, so here’s a little more
simplistic view:<HEAD>
<TITLE> Home </TITLE>
<META name=”description” content=”Technology for consumers.”>
<META name=”keywords” content=”identity theft, voip, jerri ledford,
books, technology, cybersecurity, spam, phishing, pharming, trojans,
computer virus, malware, cyberstalking, cyberharrassment, security”>
</HEAD>If you take this code apart line by line, here’s what you have:<HEAD>: This is the opening head tag.<TITLE> Home </TITLE>: This is the title tag, including both the opening and the closing code.<META name=”description” content=”Technology for consumers.”>: This is the meta
description tag, where you place a brief description of your site, keywords included.<META name=”keywords” content=”identity theft, voip, jerri ledford, books,
technology, cybersecurity, spam, phishing, pharming, trojans, computer
virus, malware, cyberstalking, cyberharrassment, security”>: This tag is where
you’ll list the keywords that you’re using to describe your site. These could be either organic or
purchased keywords.</HEAD>: This is the closing head tag. It indicates that the information in the header of the page
has ended.It’s important that the title tag appear somewhere within the opening and closing head tags. If the
title tag is located in other places in your web-site encoding, it won’t render properly, and you’ll be
left with a web site that doesn’t behave the way that you expect it to.When creating your title tags, remember that the best title tags are those that contain targeted key-
words, help develop the brand for the site, and are both concise and attention-grabbing. Usually,
the text included between the opening and closing title tags also translates into the linked text that
is displayed in search engine rankings. In other words, the title tag provides the first (and some-
times only) impression of your web page. It can either draw in visitors or cause searchers to choose
a different search result altogether.Meta description tags
Meta description tags are also important for every page on your web site. In some search engine
results, the text beneath the linked title (shown in Figure 6-3) comes directly from the information
included in the meta description tag.100
Part II SEO Strategies
75002c06.qxd:Layout 1 11/7/07 9:37 AM Page 100