Search engine optimisation
Membership to the Learning Practitioners'
Association enables a trainer to have a profile on the TrainerBase web
site. As mentioned in previous articles there are 2 types of profile:
Basic and the Full Enhanced. I have already suggested what the potential
significant advantages to having the Full enhanced profile are and
tapping into these benefits are part of what I will cover in this
article.
In the previous articles I outlined:
In this article I will take populating a Full enhanced
profile a little further
with:
And in future articles will provide tips on:
Edit pages of your profile:
This article is a continuation of where we left off with populating
your profile. You should be logged in to
Edit
Profile .
Search engine optimisation
But first. It is estimated that of the millions (and millions) of web
sites that are on the internet; only a small percentage are ever found
and an even smaller number are listed on search engines. This begs a
number of questions:
- why have a web presence,
- what is a search engine and
- how do I get on one.
The first question is not for this article but I would be pleased to
argue that anyone in the learning and development business should have a
web presence. As for the other 2 questions; here goes.
What is a search engine
A search engine: Google and Yahoo being the most popular but there
are hundreds of others, is a big powerful (group of) computer(s) that
has a primary purpose to register a list of web sites in a searchable
database. This list can be retrieved and displayed in a ranked order
when a visitor to the web site of that database uses a string of text
(search term). This web site that sits in front of this database is
commonly called a Search Engine.
Now I am not an expert in search engine technology but suffice to say
it is very powerful and is constantly changing. The importance though
from a point of gaining 'web presence' and potentially more work is for
you to get higher up the rankings in the search results; top of page one
is a good goal to aim for:0 In order to work towards this you need to
search engine optimise your profile.
How do I get on one
The following relates to the Full enhance profiles that members have
taken out in that they are; 'web enabled and search engine optimised'.
In simple terms this means that your Full enhanced profile is in effect
a web page (site) and has some of the features needed by a search engine
in order to 'index' (put it on their database) your profile. These
feature are what are called 'Meta tags'.
Meta tags
Meta tags are snippets of code on a web page. They offer information
about a page (metadata). All meta tags but the "title" tag are invisible
to a site visitor looking at your profile, but meta tags can be seen by
search engine robots (the code that reads a web page).
A Full enhanced profile has 3 Meta tags:
- Abstract:
- Description:
- Keywords:
Abstract
Generally the Abstract is a one line sentence which gives an overview
of the entire webpage. Although search engines do not as often use this
tag, it is a useful complement to search engines that read the first few
lines of text of your profile page. The importance here is that the
Abstract should relate specifically to the content of the page (contain
the same wording). The Abstract may be different to the Description.
Description
The meta description tag is the text that is displayed in a search
result describing a particular site or page. The description should be a
sentence and probably not more than 20 or so words and does not
necessarily need to be an abstract of the content of a page (contain the
same words).
Keywords
Keywords used to be the holy grail of search engine optimisation
(getting high up on the page rankings). While Google seems to have
devalued the meta keywords tag almost entirely, some other engines still
seem to give the attribute some weight (Yahoo! for instance). The
optimal number of keywords is debatable but up to 80 is a good start.
Use the most important for a particular page first and then the more
generic later. If you are putting keywords in your qualification page;
mention the qualifications first.
Title
There is one other tag that is very important to search engines and
is the only meta tag that is visible to you in your browser. The title
is displayed at the very top of your window (in the blue bit) and should
indicate what your profile is about; you or your company.
Populating meta tags
Firstly if I might identify 2 current (in that we may enhance them)
limitations. The title is the title for all your pages of your profile
rather than a title for each page, and not all pages have the meta tags
facility (don't ask me why this is it is too long ago).
The pages that have the meta tags are:
- Home page
- Qualifications
- Gallery
- Disciplines
- Client list
- Programmes
- CPD record
To populate the Home page click on the 'Edit
Search Engine Options' link in section 1 our Edit you profile.
You will see 3 text entry forms. Complete each of these fields and click
on the 'Update Options' button.
To populate the remaining pages you need to click on the 'Edit
pages of your profile' link. In the Select a page: drop
down list, choose the page you want to amend and click the 'Edit'
button. You will see 3 text entry forms. Complete each of these fields
and click on the Update Options button.
And all the other stuff that helps
The search engine optimisation facilities above are but one element
of getting your profile page listed high in the search rankings.
Remember in the last article I commented on adding links; this also adds
to your profile being seen by the search engine robots as a good
legitimate relevant site and will give you a higher ranking than a
'pretty' site that does not 'optimise'.
It has been suggested that the facilities the TrainerBase site has in
place (when used effectively) are worth (in cash) the subscription to
the Association (you could pay £200 to a SEO company and not get as good
results). Whether this was a member being kind, it does show that as a
whole the Full enhanced profile provides some significant benefits over
and above the Basic membership.
In the next article I will go into why you should be adding such
information as testimonials, courses and programmes and of course how to
do this.
If there is anything else you would like to know about what the
Association is doing to benefit its members please feel free to contact us.
