The title of a web page appears in search results as the link to that page.
Purpose
The title of a web page appears as a clickable link in search results and bookmarks. A descriptive, compelling home page title with relevant keywords can increase the number of people visiting the site.
Search Engines
Search engines view the text of the title tag as a strong indication of what the page is about. Accurate keywords in the title tag can help the page rank better in search results.
Length
A title tag should have fewer than 70 characters, including spaces. Major search engines won't display more than that.
Content
The title tag of your home page (and any other page on your site) should not contain the site’s domain name or URL. These will appear near the title in search results, so use your 70 characters to tell people what the page is about. The title tag should not contain any HTML, because it will be displayed incorrectly or not at all.
Your web page's title is:
Good This web page has a title tag.
Problem This web page has more than one title tag.
Warning Best practices say your title should be 70 characters or less in length.
Search engines often use the meta description of a web page to describe it in search results.
Purpose
The meta description tells searchers what a web page is about. It is often displayed below the title in search results, and helps people decide if they want to visit that website.
Length
Search engines will read 200 to 250 characters, but usually display only 150, including spaces. The first 150 characters of the meta description should contain the most important keywords for that web page. Using fewer than 50 characters could mean you’re not saying enough about the page.
Content
The meta description should be engaging, and should include keywords that accurately reflect what visitors will find on the web page. The keywords should be the same ones that a site's potential customers are using to search. Include a site’s location if it is important.
Your web page's meta description is:
The Rice Football Webletter, established 1998, is the nation's longest-enduring independent online news magazine in NCAA division 1A college football. Updated several times daily during the season, and frequently during the off season, the Webletter is the definitive source for Rice Owls game reports, action photos, feature stories, player and coach interviews, historical sketches, trivia, traditions, and pre and post season outlooks and summaries. Audio and video clips are featured. The site contains several hundred links to third party online sources and news stories -- true 'one-stop shopping' for
Good This web page has a meta description.
Warning Best practices say your meta description should be between 150 and 160 characters in length. Yours is 631.
Headings
Headings, such as H1, H2, H3, etc, are important sentences or phrases on a web page that quickly and clearly tells people and search engines what they can expect to find there.
Just one H1
In most cases, a web page should have just one H1 heading. Using multiple H1 headings is okay if that is a logical way to organize the page, but they should be used sparingly. That’s because search engines can view multiple H1 headings as an attempt to signal that all the content on a page is equally important, a tactic that’s seen as an attempt to game the search engine algorithms.
Purpose
Search engines look for an H1 heading to determine what a page is about. Human visitors do, too.
Content and placement
The H1 heading appears on the web page itself, unlike the page title, which people will see mostly in search results.
The H1 tag (which contains the H1 heading) is usually listed first among the other heading tags for a page. None of the major search engines, however, will penalize a site for listing H2 through H6 tags ahead of the H1 tag.
The H1 heading for a page should be different from its title. Each can target different important keywords for better SEO.
Problem This web page has no H1 heading tag. You should have one.
Problem This web page has no heading tags. You should have a H1 tag and can have multiple other heading tags.
RICEFOOTBALL.NET in search results
You can see below how Google and most other search engines will display this site's home page in search results. The title is used as the link to the page, and the meta description usually appears below the title.
ricefootball.net/
The Rice Football Webletter, established 1998, is the nation's longest-enduring independent online news magazine in NCAA division 1A college football....
Sites You Link To
Outbound links tell search engines which websites you find valuable and relevant to your own site, and help your visitors find what they need; even if it's not on your site.
Search engines
Including links to relevant sites is good for your website's standing with search engines. The Web is all about linking, and carefully chosen outbound links tell search engines that you understand their value to site visitors. These outbound links also help search engines classify your site in relationship to others.
Here, we identify only the outbound links on this site's home page, but outbound links add value to any important page on a website.
Site visitors
Outbound links tell people that you want to provide them with good information, even if it’s not on your own site. These links can also prompt other people to link to your site, which can boost its reputation and ranking in search results.
Here, we identify only the outbound links on this site's home page, but outbound links add value to any important page on a website.
| Site | Number of links |
| csnbbs.com | 2 |
| www.riceowls.com | 57 |
| www.chron.com | 31 |
| twitter.com | 13 |
| www.facebook.com | 4 |
| www.ricethresher.org | 17 |
| www.cbssports.com | 6 |
| www.accuweather.com | 1 |
| www.rice.edu | 2 |
| ricehistorycorner.com | 1 |
| rubpa.rice.edu | 1 |
| rice.rivals.com | 1 |
| ricefootball.net | 1 |
| www.houstonchronicle.com | 38 |
| www.underdogdynasty.com | 18 |
| www.elpasotimes.com | 4 |
| sports.yahoo.com | 3 |
| www.theprospectordaily.com | 1 |
| www.minerrush.com | 2 |
| elpasoheraldpost.com | 1 |
| sportschatplace.com | 8 |
| campusinsiders.com | 8 |
| www.elpasoproud.com | 1 |
| www.gastongazette.com | 1 |
| www.youtube.com | 16 |
| news.google.com | 4 |
| www.nsjonline.com | 1 |
| ninertimes.com | 1 |
| www.charlotteobserver.com | 3 |
| www.foxsports.com | 3 |
| saintpetersblog.com | 1 |
| www.sun-sentinel.com | 7 |
| www.upressonline.com | 2 |
| www.shreveporttimes.com | 2 |
| www.foxnews.com | 1 |
| www.thenewsstar.com | 2 |
| sportsnola.com | 1 |
| www.houstonpress.com | 4 |
| pbs.twimg.com | 1 |
| collegefootball.ap.org | 1 |
| osgsports.sportsblog.com | 1 |
| www.expressnews.com | 6 |
| www.google.com | 5 |
| www.mysanantonio.com | 3 |
| www.sbnation.com | 2 |
| insidethepylon.com | 1 |
| www.texasmonthly.com | 2 |
| www.hattiesburgamerican.com | 4 |
| wjtv.com | 1 |
| www.vicksburgpost.com | 1 |
| www.sunherald.com | 6 |
| www.forgotten5.com | 1 |
| www.wtvm.com | 1 |
| hubcityspokes.com | 2 |
| www.studentprintz.com | 1 |
| www.wdam.com | 2 |
| www.clarionledger.com | 2 |
| youtu.be | 9 |
| www.dentonrc.com | 7 |
| www.usatoday.com | 5 |
| www.star-telegram.com | 2 |
| meangreenblog.dentonrc.com | 4 |
| www.espn.com | 5 |
| ntdaily.com | 2 |
| dailycampus.com | 1 |
| fansided.com | 1 |
| www.texastribune.org | 2 |
| baylorlariat.com | 2 |
| www.washingtonpost.com | 4 |
| sportsday.dallasnews.com | 8 |
| www.nydailynews.com | 1 |
| nymag.com | 1 |
| collegefootballnews.com | 1 |
| www.ourdailybears.com | 2 |
| sicem365.com | 1 |
| athlonsports.com | 1 |
| dfw.cbslocal.com | 1 |
| www.49ers.com | 1 |
| www.wacotrib.com | 1 |
| www.todaysu.com | 1 |
| www.kwtx.com | 1 |
| army.rivals.com | 4 |
| www.scout.com | 1 |
| www.khou.com | 2 |
| www.bcsnn.com | 2 |
| www.vavel.com | 2 |
| www.si.com | 1 |
| www.huffingtonpost.com | 1 |
| pregame.com | 1 |
| www.yardbarker.com | 1 |
| soundcloud.com | 1 |
| temple-news.com | 1 |
| www.armytimes.com | 2 |
| thecomeback.com | 1 |
| www.milehighreport.com | 2 |
| www.courier-journal.com | 2 |
| www.wlky.com | 1 |
| www.kentuckynewera.com | 1 |
| www.sacbee.com | 1 |
| www.bgdailynews.com | 4 |
| mycn2.com | 2 |
| www.owensborohealth.org | 1 |
| wkuherald.com | 2 |
| www.thedailybeast.com | 1 |
| www.wbko.com | 1 |
| embeds.audioboom.com | 1 |
| latino.foxnews.com | 1 |
| newsroomamerica.com | 1 |
| www.goodbullhunting.com | 1 |
| www.orlandosentinel.com | 1 |
| houston.cbslocal.com | 1 |
| www.pointerview.com | 1 |
| www.recordonline.com | 1 |
| www.wkusports.com | 1 |
| sports.cbslocal.com | 1 |
| conferenceusa.com | 1 |
| www.fbschedules.com | 1 |
| vimeo.com | 62 |
| philadelphia.cbslocal.com | 1 |
| www.denverbroncos.com | 1 |
| www.dnj.com | 1 |
| www.yourhoustonnews.com | 1 |
| www2.kusports.com | 1 |
| rice.247sports.com | 1 |
| bleacherreport.com | 1 |
| isportsweb.com | 1 |
| www.instagram.com | 1 |
| espn.go.com | 1 |
Image Descriptions
Image descriptions, also called "alt text", are the best way to describe images to search engines and to visitors using screen readers.
Help for visitors with impaired vision
People with impaired vision use screen readers to help them “read” websites. If you provide descriptive alt text for images on your site, people using screen readers will know what the images are about, and will get the same full understanding of your site that others do.
Good for search engine rankings
Describing images on a web page with alt text can help the page rank higher in search results if you include important and relevant keywords. Do not be tempted to stuff irrelevant keywords into alt text just so a page will rank well for those words. Search engines can recognize this ploy for what it is: an attempt to game results.
Writing image descriptions
This is what an image description looks like in HTML:
<img src="image.jpg" alt="This is the image description">
You can write image descriptions, or alt text, by writing the HTML directly into the code for a web page. If you're using a content management system or online commerce software package, it will probably have a feature to help you quickly create alt text for your images.
Caution: While some software packages automatically generate alt text, they don't always do it well. Always check the quality of automatically generated alt text.
Warning Some of the images don't have descriptions.
Robots
Your website's robots.txt file can tell search engines to ignore parts of your site.
Purpose
Website owners usually use robots.txt to let search engines know which pages or sections of their site shouldn't be indexed — for example, web contact forms, print versions of web pages and other content that's duplicated elsewhere on the site. Robots.txt can also be used to request that specific robots not index a site. For more information, read
How To Use Robots.txt.
Be careful!
If you're going to use robots.txt, be careful not to accidentally exclude search engines from pages you want people to find.
Search engine robots
You'll need to know the names of specific search engine robots - or "bots" – if you’re going to exclude any or all of them from any part of your site.
- Google’s bot is called Googlebot. Google is the world’s largest search engine, and is where many people discover new websites.
- Bing’s bot is called msnbot. Bing also provides search results to people using Yahoo to search the Web. Together, Bing and Yahoo are the second largest search resource, after Google.
- Baidu’s bot is called Baiduspider. Baidu is a major search engine in China, and the number of people using it is increasing rapidly.
- AboutUs.org’s bot is called AboutUsBot. To create a Site Report, AboutUs uses crawling technology that’s similar to what search engines use.
| Bot Name | Description | Result |
| googlebot | Crawler for the Google.com search engine. | Allowed |
| bingbot | Crawler for the Bing.com and Yahoo.com search engines. | Allowed |
| baiduspider | Crawler for Baidu.com, the leading Chinese search engine. | Allowed |
| yandex | Crawler for Yandex.com, the leading search engine in Russia. | Allowed |
| yandexbot | Crawler for Yandex.com, the leading search engine in Russia. | Allowed |
| sosospider | Crawler for Soso.com, a major Chinese search engine. | Allowed |
| exabot | Crawler for ExaLead, a major search engine in France. | Allowed |
| sogou spider | Crawler for Sogou.com, a major search engine in China. | Allowed |
Canonical Url
This website can live at www.ricefootball.net or ricefootball.net. It's best for your site's visibility to live at just one URL, or web address. You'll want to create a 301 redirect to the URL you choose from the other URL.
Choose one or the other
Whichever of these URLs you choose, make sure your website lives ONLY at that location, which is called the canonical URL for your site.
Be careful!
If you choose www.MyWebsite.com for your site, make sure people who don't type www can get to your site, too. Create a permanent 301 redirect from MyWebsite.com to www.MyWebsite.com.
If the same web page exists at two different URLs, people can choose to link to one or the other. Links from other sites to your website are valuable — they tell search engines that your site is important to people. By splitting valuable links between two identical pages, you're diluting the power of those links to help a page rank higher in search results.
Problem Your URL is not canonical.
