As a result of reading of photographers concerns with search engine optimization for their websites - and their realizing the need to have relevant text in their webpage source code so that the page has content that can be used for search engine and search directory indexing - and the renewed efforts at Sitemaps - and a false confidence that a Splash page will be all that's necessary to get their website recognized by popular search engines . . .

. . . tonight I have just spent the last couple of hours coding a simple webpage that just may OPEN YOUR EYES as to what textual content is really on your webpage. I designed the application to extract the common Page Title, Meta Description, and Meta Keywords which are phrases that most are aware of . . .


. . . but what we don't often know about our webpage, is what it looks like if all of the html, php, and other tags are stripped out of the Page Source code that we see when we click on "View Source" in our web browser. In actual fact it is this stripped down webpage text that search engines extract and use for indexing your website in their directories.

GIVE IT A TRY _ IT IS EDUCATIONAL _ and may just help you to take a different approach to how your webpage is put together so that you can benefit from lots of appropriate keywords and keyphrases.

Just Click Here:
http://rwwebhost.com/viewsource.php

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Please keep in mind, that I threw this script together quickly. It is accurate and thorough, but I have not built in complex algorithms that would extract ALT content in the IMG tags. Different search engines may allow more text than I have with my algorithm, or they may not allow all that I have allowed. What I have done is simply strip out every tag leaving behind the text in between. I was actually shocked at how little usable text was available on some of the webpages that I tested the script on while building it.

i don't think it grabbed what's in my <noscript>

crap my noscript isn't showing...thx.

I don't get it--it didn't show anything for our website. Does that mean our doesn't have anything?

Got this for yours Airika:

PAGE TITLE
LIFE: LOVE: ART || Wedding Photography by Gerald & Airika Pope


META DESCRIPTION:
Wedding Photography by Gerald & Airika Pope


META KEYWORDS:
BluDomain, DWF, Pro4um, Digital Chat, Photography websites, OSP, PUG, Pictage, the Knot, wedding photography, seattle, tacoma, destination, photographers wedding websites, ShootQ, Lake Union, Gasworks Park, Canlis, Golden Gardens photography, Lake Washington, Discovery Park, Engagement photos, Bellevue Botanical Gardens, Bridal Fashion, Wedding dresses, seattle wedding photographers, destination weddings, bridal couture, photography pictures, wedding photography pictures bellingham, everett, clyde hill, medina, bellevue wedding, redmond wedding, husband wife photography teams, artistic wedding photography, photojournalistic wedding photography, wedding photojournalism, tacoma, gig harbor, west seattle, PRO Club, wedding art, art, the popes, airika, gerald, airika pope, gerald pope,life, love, art, destination weddings caribbean, weddings in hawaii, mexico wedding photography


BODY CONTENT:

Remember to try different webpages on your website also as they should reflect the theme of that page and have good supporting content. The deeper the site, the more search engine indexing. Just enter the complete address to the separate pages - not just the Home page.

Also - it is the PAGE TITLE and BODY CONTENT that matter and should be rich with text content. Few search engines are using the Meta Keywords and Description for indexing webpages.

VALUE ADDED THIS MORNING . . .

. . . got up this morning and decided to research the maximum length that the TITLE, DESCRIPTION and KEYWORDS should be and after finding that information, thought it would appropriate to do the calculations on the extracted webpage data and include a "Character Count" beside each of the categories for all of our benefit. I have also included the recommended maximum values - although it is always good to do your own research on what is considered optimal.

SO NOW YOU WILL ALSO KNOW HOW MANY CHARACTERS YOU ARE USING

Glad some are finding the webpage useful - if not fun!

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING in http://www.agneslopez.com on line 1

Yup - there must be something that doesn't allow extraxting the meta tag for that webpage, using my php code - - - this site works fine though:
http://news.agneslopez.com/

Guess you can't hit all home runs.

There is another photographer who is not to able to read her Splash page also. All of the other pages on your websites can be extracted. The common factor on both webpages, is the first line of code on in the Source Code of your webpages ( <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> ) - - - I am supsecting that that is the cause of the issues. Not sure why yet, but I may find out eventually. BTW, I am now supressing the "errors" and a blank page shows when a webpage can't be read.

Cool tool anyway. Thanks for posting it.

Ever since I did a bit of a cleanup on the Boss' website pages, inserting ALT tags and using the H1 tag, etc. her ranking has jumped considerably. She's first page for Ponte Vedra Beach Wedding Photographers on Google...

The blog is really what comes up high though. Not surprising since there's more text...

There are a lot of variables depending on the search engines. My personal main focus is currently with Google and secondarily with Yahoo visibility.

With page Title tags the recommended maximum is 64 characters according to most resources - - - however there is no need to be this restrictive as Yahoo allows up to 120 characters. All that happens if you go beyond 120 is that Yahoo chops them off, so they are useless and can just make a mess for people bookmarking your webpage. What is interesting about Google is that while their maximum is 66 characters, they only chop off at the end of a word - - - so if you have a long last title word that exceeds the 66 character limit, only up to the previous word will be indexed and show. So a recommendation is to think of the Title as 2 pieces with the most important words within the first 66 characters to benfit from both Google and Yahoo, and then add on the extra characters up to 120 to benefit from what Yahoo looks for.

As far as META Description goes - - - while everyone states that the Description and Keywords are currently not being used by serach engines and so don't hold much weight, Google's Official Webmaster CEntral Blog suggests that "meta descriptions might be displayed in Google search results -- if the description is high enough quality. A little extra work on your meta descriptions can go a long way towards showing a relevant snippet in search results. ". All recommendations are to keep your Page Description concise and specific to the page content.

META Keywords have the been the main target of Spammers in the past and so they appear to be largly ignored. Some web designers include large blocks of search engine keywords and keyphrases in the hope of getting their website noticed. I have heard that this practice can be harmfull to your search engine placement. One source suggests that "over 300 keywords may not do any good. This number will help you in optimizing your web page without being penalized by the search engines. We generally use only 3 to 12 keywords or keyword phrases in our Meta Keyword Tags and always stay well below the recommended Meta Keyword maximum characters."

So that is some of the information I have available to me.

Wow Robert, thanks so much for going through all that effort to use your expertise to help others!

I don't have much to test yet, but I'll be bookmarking this for the future

MUCH IMPROVED SCRIPT TONIGHT . . .

Well I've made the webpage even better and more useful. It now strips out the content between hidden tags like <script>, and so is more accurate in showing the actual text that a search engine will see and be able to index. Also fixed a bug with websites that could not be extracted as a result of having this line of code <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>. As far as I know, all normal websites should now work and display the contents.

Man! This is really cool. Robert, thanks for putting the work into it and sharing it with the rest of us.

Thanks for taking the time to do this and Sharing. This is pretty sweet

thanks for the share Robert!