Creating A Meta Tag Approach For Your Website
This post describes a general approach and defines responsibilities for creating meta tags for inclusion in all of the pages especially the key pages for SEO.
Timing
For pages that will be optimised for search engines, the target keyword/keyphrase (see the keywords strategy) will be need to be defined before creating the meta tags.
Meta Tags
The most important meta tags that are used are:
- Title tag <title></title>
- Description tag <description></description>
Title Tag
If it’s not already created by your Content Management System, the title tag should be either the same as the title of the page and the site name or very close with complementary keywords. For example, the title tag for the Women’s section of the John Lewis website is Women’s Clothing | Dresses, Shoes, Handbags & Purses | John Lewis whilst its page title is Women.
Note: This is good SEO practice, therefore if the page is optimised for search engines, its title (H1) needs to be carefully considered.
Description Tag
Note: Since the end of 2008, this tag is sometimes not being used by Google as Google seems to create its own description from the text within the page from time to time. However, just in case Google uses the <description> tag, we must keep on using it.
The <description> tag has 3 primary uses:
- To describe the content of the page accurately and succinctly
- To serve as a short, text “advertisement” to click on your results in the search results
- To display targeted keywords, not for ranking purposes, but to indicate the content to searchers
Dos and Don’t
Do not exceed 160 characters because Google only shows the first 160 characters in SERPs
Describe your content honestly, don’t bait!
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Large websites are failing to deliver on the most basic expectations for usability and accessibility [ARTICLE]
According to this eConsultancy article web governance plays a vital role on sites’ usability and accessibility. But the project manager’s task is just as important (if not more). A user-centred design process should be built-in the project plan and accessibility should be integrated at every stage of the project life cycle from gathering users’ requirements through to User Acceptance Testing.
One Mistake to Avoid with Online Forms
Forms have always been a hot usability topic, call-to-actions often lead to forms, forms usually lead to a purchase, and even if they don’t they are part of the customer acquisition process. Forms are used for registering your interest for a product, booking an appointment, requesting a quote, the uses are endless.
Project strategy is the missing link between the business strategy and the traditional project plan.
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He who fails to plan, plans to fail
