Search Engine Optimization Academy

In order to examine your pages for problems, you need to be able to read the pages’ source code; remember, I told you you’d need to be able to understand HTML! In order to see the source code, choose View➪Source in your browser.

TITLE tags tell a browser what text to display in the browser’s title bar, and they’re very important to search engines. Quite reasonably, search engines figure that the TITLE tags may indicate the page’s title — and therefore its subject.

The DESCRIPTION tag is important because search engines often index it (under the reasonable assumption that the description describes the contents of the page) and, in some cases, may use the DESCRIPTION tag to provide the site description on the search-results page.

Many sites have perfectly readable pages, with the exception that the searchbots can’t negotiate the site navigation. The searchbots can reach the home page, index it, and read it, but they can’t go any further. If, when you search Google for your pages, you find only the home page, this is likely the problem.