Chapter 1 - Search Engine Optimization - Meta Tags and Sitemaps

Welcome to Search Engine Optimization. This section will be for SEO where social media is not required (Pinterest verification is included here). A few concepts with Meta Tags and Schema.org were covered in the Social Media series in Chapter 2 - The Big Four, Chapter 5 - Posting and Searching and Chapter 6 - Images and Analytics.

We will start with Meta Tag verification and Sitemaps.

	Meta Tag Verification The concept is simple. The verification system will provide you with an HTML file or Meta Tag that you insert into your code and upload to your site. Then you validate it by running their crawler to verify that you own that website. The image below is the Meta Tag version. I also use the HTML file too. There are several other ways to verify your site but HTML and Meta Tags are the most convenient. Yahoo Search merged with Bing some years ago so the Meta Tag y_key is no longer in use. Google Search Console "Verification is the process of proving that you own the site that you claim to own. We need to confirm ownership because once you are verified for a site or app you have access to its Google Search data, and can affect its presence on Google Search." - Google Bing Webmaster Tools "Webmaster Help & How To provides you with assistance for the Bing Webmaster Tools as well as with guidelines on how to be successful in Bing search." - Bing Pinterest Site Verification "You can claim websites you own. To claim your website, you'll need to add a meta tag or upload an HTML file to your website's HTML code. - Pinterest
	Sitemaps "The Sitemaps protocol allows a webmaster to inform search engines about URLs on a website that are available for crawling. A Sitemap is an XML file that lists the URLs for a site. It allows webmasters to include additional information about each URL: when it was last updated, how often it changes, and how important it is in relation to other URLs in the site. This allows search engines to crawl the site more efficiently and to find URLs that may be isolated from rest of the site's content." - Wikipedia Sitemaps use to be a way to show users around their website but since the early days, search engines have taken over. The two popular methods are HTML and XML. I use XML. If you don't know how to do this from scratch then you can use many free generators to create your XML file. Then you can submit the Sitemap to the sitemap section of Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools or other engine that has the ability to add sitemaps. Google Search Console Bing Webmaster Tools
	Conclusion There is a lot of code to be written even before you display any content on your website. We have Meta Tags for search engines, social media and verification. We also have Schema and Sitemaps to guide search engines and users to our website. Now I need to add this article to my sitemap. We have covered so far... CH 1: Search Engine Optimization - Meta Tags and Sitemaps
	Questions, comments, want to point out errors or just want to say Hi? Please fill out the contact form below. 5/14/2019 - Chapter 1 - SEO - Meta Tags and Sitemaps 5/15/2019 - Chapter 2 - SEO - Site Optimization 5/20/2019 - Chapter 3 - SEO - Retrospective IV

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Chapter 1 - Search Engine Optimization - Meta Tags and Sitemaps

Meta Tag Verification

Sitemaps

Conclusion

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