Search Engine Optimisation | Spiderworking.com's Social Networking blog

January 26, 2011

Q&A Tags and Meta Tags – What’s the difference?

Today’s post is a guest post from Alan Coleman from OnlineAdvertising.ie. Alan is the founder & CEO on OnlineAdvertising.ie, they are specialists in the areas of Google Adwords & SEO. OnlineAdvertising.ie have had numerous campaigns published by Google as Case Studies and are finalists in the upcoming DMA’s in the “Best Digital Marketing Agency” category.

Last year we asked you to submit your social media questions for us to answer,

SM Receivables asked ”what is the difference between tags and meta tags?”

We’ll hand you over to Alan for the answer:

I’m not 100% what the tweeter meant by “tags”, so I will give a give explanations for a few of the possibilities. Websites have 2 audiences, their users and the search engines. I will detail the relevance of each type of “tag” to both parties.

Title Tags

The “title tag” of your webpage is very important for SEO. It helps the search engine understand what your webpage is about. It is also generally the headline of your webpages’ listing on the Google search results so it will influence whether users visit your site or not.

Your “title tag” is also visible to your websites users at the very top of their screen. So it may influence conversions.

Meta Tags

A meta tag (which can be meta description or meta keywords among other things) is not visible to website users and has less (if any) value in SEO. Meta descriptions are important however, because the search engine will generally display the “meta description” in it’s search results. So well written copy in the “meta description” can increase clicks & conversions on your websites.

Alt Tags

An “alt tag” is the labelling of an image on a website. If you hover your icon over the image on a website it’s alt tag will appear. Search engines can’t see pictures so unless you tag them they will not know what the picture is of, and won’t be able to display them to people searching for such images, or attribute the keywords to your web page. So “alt tags” are important for SEO.

January 12, 2011

Improve the power of your website links on Linkedin

Have you noticed that some Linkedin profiles have edited their websites to describe what they are (see above)? Changing your website titles like this makes your links more clickable as well as adding to the SEO value of the link. If you are stuck with the default ‘company website’, ‘blog’ tags this tutorial is for you.

Click ‘Profile’ on the top menu bar and choose ‘Edit profile’ from the drop down menu.

Scroll down to the website section.

Click ‘Edit’ next to the website you want to change.

On the next screen choose ‘Other’ from the drop down menu on the left hand side of the website you want to edit

A new box will appear with ‘Website Title’ written inside.

Replace this text with a description of your website: e.g. Social Media for Business

Type in the url of your website (including http://) in the box next to your description

Scroll to the bottom of the page and click ‘Save Changes’

Check your profile, your website description should now appear as a hot link on your profile page.

Thanks to Susanne McCabe from Totem.ie for suggesting this blog post. If you have a burning question about linkedin leave a comment below and we’ll do our best to answer it.

Tags: Linkedin — Tags: customise Linkedin websites, Linkedin, Linkedin profile, Linkedin websites, profile, search engine optimisation, seo, Social Media —

Comments (0)

April 8, 2010

Our Partners: T2 Helping your website be seen

Running a social media campaign is a fantastic way to drive traffic to your website and to improve your google ranking. But it should not be used alone. For this reason, if we are asked to work with a customer whose website requires SEO (search engine optimisation) we refer them to our expert partners t2. I asked Rita from t2 to tell me more about SEO:

Search Engine Optimisation is the process of making a site and its content highly relevant for both search engines and searchers. Simply put Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is the process of making your website friendly to search engines like Google. Successful SEO helps a site gain top positioning in for relevant words and phrases. It is not not enough for a website to look good it has to be found on search engines using words related to your business or service and by people in your locality, whether it be on a county, country or international basis. If your website is not being found by search engines like Google you are missing out on valuable sales and enquiries.

t2 can optimise your website for the most relevant keywords and phrases. Through comprehensive keyword research we can find out what words people use to find your business’ product or service. We use best practice techniques in order to enhance your website’s performance and in turn your return on investment. If your website is not performing on Google but you don’t know why talk to t2 today.

“Search Engine Optimisation is the process of making a site and its content highly relevant for both search engines and searchers. Simply put Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is the process of making your website friendly to search engines like Google. Successful SEO helps a site gain top positioning in for relevant words and phrases. It is not not enough for a website to look good it has to be found on search engines using words related to your business or service and by people in your locality, whether it be on a county, country or international basis. If your website is not being found by search engines like Google you are missing out on valuable sales and enquiries.