How to Use the Head Section of Web Pages for SEO

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Written by Bill Steele
Category: Internet Marketing
Published: December 29 2013

People use search engines (i.e. Google, Yahoo, Bing) to find information on all types of products and services. In order to satisfy their users' quest for information, search engines need to properly categorize the information they collect when they examine all of the websites on the Internet. To help search engines properly categorize your website (so they can present it to users searching for your products or services), you need to make sure that it contains certain elements.

How to Use the HEAD Section for SEO

The HEAD section of a web page contains many pieces of information that can help search engines properly categorize your website. These pieces of information include TITLE and META information:

 <HEAD>
 <TITLE>This is where you place the title of the web page</TITLE>
 <META name="description" content="This is where you place the description of the web page">
 <META name="keywords" content="This is where you place relevant words contained within the web page">
 </HEAD>

How to Use Title Tags for SEO

You need to provide a title for each web page on your site to let search engines can quickly determine what the page is about. To do this, surround the title of your web page with <TITLE></TITLE> tags. The title should contain keywords/phrase relevant to the topic of the page, while providing an enticing statement to encourage users to visit your site.

 <HEAD>
 <TITLE>Quality Blue Widgets and Red Widgets</TITLE>
 </HEAD>

How to Use Meta Description Tags for SEO

The Meta Description is a statement that tells search engines additional information about the content of the web page. This statement is not viewable on the web page, but search engines may elect to show this statement in relevant search results, so it should be written with the goal of keyword relevance and enticing the user to take further action upon reading.

 <HEAD>
 <TITLE>Quality Blue Widgets and Red Widgets</TITLE>
 <META name="description" content="We sell the best blue widgets and red widgets in the industry!">
 </HEAD>

How to Use Meta Keyword Tags for SEO

You can also tell search engines topic relevant words that are contained within your web page copy. As the large search engines have become more advanced, they have relied less on keyword tags, but it best to use them anyway for secondary search engine inclusion.

 <HEAD>
 <TITLE>Quality Blue Widgets and Red Widgets</TITLE>
 <META name="description" content="We sell the best blue widgets and red widgets in the industry!">
 <META name="keywords" content="blue widgets, red widgets">
 </HEAD>