When Internet users visit your site, they see the content that is displayed on each page, including images, videos and other assets. Unless they are particularly interested in how a web page is put together, visitors to your site won't look at the source code. A search engine, however, looks there first.
A search engine's reliance on the HTML tags that helped you build your website offers some automatic tools that you can use "behind the scenes" to optimize search engine performance. Specifically, you can use the HTML <meta> tag to leave messages for search engines, such as what kind of content your website offers, who wrote that content, and what keywords it contains. These tags are placed in the <head> section of your website.
To optimize your website for search engine visibility, you should include these tags as part of the metadata for each page.
| Page Characteristic | HTML Element/Example |
| Page Title | <title>YouTube</title> |
| The title will be used not only when bookmarking your site and up in the browser tab, but it also appears in search engine results. | |
| Page Description | <meta name="description" content="Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube."> |
| The description will appear as a blurb or synopsis of your site in search engine results. | |
| Keywords | <meta name="keywords" content="video, sharing, camera phone, video phone, free, upload"> |
| The keywords will indicate relevance to user searches for specific themes or words. |
Relevance is important because you want searchers to be happy they landed on your site—rather than confused about how they got there. It should be immediately obvious to a visitor why the search engine directed them to your website, based on the search term they entered. Placing highly relevant keywords in the <meta> element will optimize your website's ability to draw visitors who want to be there and will stay for a while, clicking on other pages in your site.
Question
A website's url or web address does appear in the element. Why would it affect search engine results nonetheless?
