Key Words

[Dazman]

I am brand new to web design of any form, and am learning as I go along. I thought I was ready to publish my site and the web host asked me about my keywords. As stupid as this probably sounds to you good people who are seasoned web designers, this is something I hadn't considered or been advised about previously. I have paid the web host an amount of money to feed my keywords into the internet which I am told is supposed to attract web traffic, but I can see that on the Xara program itself under "web properties" and "publish properties" and there are similar pages for website and page, and it asks for page description and keywords and tracker text. It looks as though I have paid for a feature that is already contained within Xara.

So my question is, can anyone point me in the direction of a Xara tutorial on the subject? I have had a look at a few web design books from the library, but they are written by experts apparently for experts, so i'm no further forward. I want to give my website every opportunity on the net, and if I can find a way of learning how to complete these other boxes with keywords etc, that may help.

Thankyou in advance to anyone who can offer any guidance.

[gwpriester]

Welcome to TalkGraphics

There are three items that matter, your site TITLE. This should be a short sentence of 10-12 words or less that describes your site. This is what generally appears in the tab of your browser or the words that appear when a visitor bookmarks your page.

DESCRIPTION: Again, a brief sentence or phrase that describes the content of your website.

KEYWORDS: What are ten or less words that people might search for. List these in order of importance with most important word or phrase first.

It is always best if your title, description and keywords are consistent and that they complement each other (complete vs flatter). And a short paragraph or a few sentences of text that also repeat some of these elements is good as well.

The PAGE meta tags should be similar to the WEBSITE PROPERTIES meta tags (keywords, description, etc.) but should be more tailored to the individual pages.

Give a lot of thought to these keywords. There are various free and for sale products that can help you determine the best keywords. Here is a link to a Google Search for The Best Keywords. http://tinyurl.com/2ee6bo8

It really comes down to common sense and focus.

[Dazman]

Thank you for this. I will have a go and see where it takes me. Thanks again.

[pauland]

It looks as though I have paid for a feature that is already contained within Xara.

Sounds like your web host is offering to submit info to search engines (which is not quite the same as just putting that info into a page). Bit difficullt to tell from your post.