Search engine ranking tips continued

Headings

When a search engine visits your site, it usually starts reading from the top of the page and works its way down. Page headings are one of the first things they scan before the body content and this helps the engine decipher what the page is about.

As well as helping break up text on a page, headings can carry more weight when being indexed in a search engine as it can notice the style and size of font used on the page.

Page Titles

The title of a web page is not a visible part of the page but is important to include, it relates to the way the page is displayed in search results and a well written title can help search engine ranking.

The page title is found in the source code of a web page between the following tags <title>Jade Creative Website Designers</title>. If unspecified it will be listed as ‘Untitled’ in a search engine.

Meta Tags

Meta tags are a part of the source code of a web page and reside under the page title code. These tags used to play a large role in rankings but now they are not such a priority to search engines.

They do have their uses, some search engines still use the descriptions of these tags and they may make a slight difference to your rank so are worthwhile including.

Alt Tags

Alt tags are used in the source code behind images and if included appear when you mouse over an image. Search engines take notice of these tags so try to use succinct keywords when you can.

Sitemaps

This is an often underestimated factor when being indexed in search engines; this is a map of your site and allows search engines, and users, to navigate your site easily.