Keywords & Tags
Whenever you do a search on Google sites will appear based on the words that you enter, but how do you optimize your website to ensure that it appears on that all important front page of Google?
Using keywords and tags in your website design is part of the process called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). To understand how best to develop your site it can be helpful to first understand how search engines work.
Search engines such as Google and Yahoo use a process known as “crawling”. This basically means that they have programs that scour through the internet, or crawl, to find new and updated web pages. Their programs decide which pages to crawl, how often and how many pages to retrieve. while crawling through the page the program will create an index of all the words used in the site. They also pick up the words used in the keywords and tags sections of each web page. in addition to crawling, Google uses a system called “page ranking”. The rank, or score, given to a website is determined by the number of pages linking to that site, and the number of links away from that site to other sites.
When a person goes to the search engine (e.g. Google or Yahoo) they enter the words they are looking for such as DOULA TRAINING. The search engine will look through their index of sites and find the web pages that most closely match the words (or keywords) entered. The ideal is to have your site come up on the first page of search results when people enter search words that are relevant for your business.
A web page is written in a particular language called HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). You may be familiar with this already if you have been responsible for developing your website. HTML is laid out in a very specific way. Each section of the web page consists of tags. There is an opening and a closing tag for each section. For example:
<html>
<head>
Heading text
</head>
<body>
This is where the body of your web page would go
</body>
</html>
In the header section you can add metatags and keywords to tell search engines what your site is about. To create metatags and keywords you simply enclose them between an opening and closing tag as below. The description metatag contains a sentence or two about your site. The keywords metatag contains the words that people might enter to find your services or products. Theya re all separated by a comma. Let’s look at the Childbirth International site as an example:
<head>
<title>Childbirth International</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Training for Doulas, Childbirth Educators and breastfeeding Counselors everywhere”>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”doula, training, childbirth educator”>
</head>
If you find your website is not appearing high up on the search engines, Google has some excellent pages that help you to analyze and improve your site:
Google information on improving your site
How does Childbirth International training address this?
Every Childbirth International course provides a section on building your business. We look at topics such as marketing and advertising, planning for a successful business, and using a website. We also offer a course on building and growing your business that helps you focus on increasing the number of clients you have and making your business more profitable.
Childbirth International is a truly diverse international training organization. With students in 75 countries, from every corner of the globe, we celebrate the differences, similarities and uniqueness of each culture, religion and race. Providing the most comprehensive and flexible training available for birth professionals you can truly make a difference within your community.
Childbirth International offers training programs for Birth Doulas, Postpartum Doulas, Childbirth Educators and Breastfeeding Counselors. We also have an advanced training course available for birth professionals to help you build and grow your business.
For more information on training with Childbirth International, take a look at our website, or contact us.
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