Page headers

Good search engine optimization (SEO) starts with one of the most basic thing which is optimizing page titles and Meta tags information (Page description and keywords) for every page of a website. Before even thinking of building advertising campaigns or search engine marketing strategies, optimizing title and meta tags is a prerequisite for any successful internet marketing campaign.

Introduction to HTML page headers

Sometimes referred to as “page header information” because of the position they appear in browsers and HTML markup, they have a great impact on the way your page is seen by users and search engines. According to W3C standards, the title of a HTML web page document is contained in its header:

Code quote: <title>Your page Title</title>

Page titles are probably the most important element in SEO since they appear directly in listings on search engine result pages (SERPs). Google gives clear guidelines on how to set the title on a web page and puts a clear emphasis on the title tag. Page titles also appear under various forms depending on the browser. It is usually displayed at the top of the window, in simple browsers, and sometimes in tabs, in modern browsers. Browsers also tend to use the title of a page as the default name for different functions such as in users’ browsing history or bookmarks which makes the title of a page the most widely used HTML element to identify your site.

Another important element of the header is the Meta tags information of a web page.

Meta tags are also defined by the W3C to appear in the page’s header code and to provide information on the page and the website. There are several types of Meta tags, among which the meta description and meta keywords are perhaps the most commonly used in seo.

Code Quote: <meta name="keywords" content="my, keywords, separated, by, a, coma" />

The impact on search engines’ indexing of valid meta information is often argued and nothing can really be guaranteed. However, Yahoo! and Google’s guidelines show that meta descriptions are still considered useful by search engines. Indeed, meta descriptions appear on search engine result pages, usually under the page title. Users read descriptions on result pages and if they find the correct keywords they click on the corresponding link. By increasing clickthroughs and driving more traffic to a web site, meta tags still prove to be valuable to perfect a site’s seo.

In search engine optimization, it always comes down to choosing the right keywords for your content and your long term plans. There are different strategies, whether you’re looking to have more clickthroughs or a better ranking. Davyin Internet Solutions offers web design and development services based on the Open Source CMS, Drupal, which provides great flexibility to achieve different levels of seo.

The design templates and themes we build for a website integrate default page header information. The customized Drupal solution we offer features content management functions allowing manual editing of page titles and meta tags through simple forms. It provides a simple and flexible interface to easily change the information of a single page for greater customization. This is especially useful when the amount of pages is relatively low or for special pages like a landing page. When it comes to larger number of pages such as on some of our projects (NextStep Directory for example), page titles and meta tags are automatically generated based on various patterns. 

By combining valid page information with other seo components such as search engine friendly urls or an automatic XML Sitemap, your website makes the most out of what modern white hat seo has to offer.