Web Resume Project

Tips for Getting a Top Search Engine Ranking for Your Web Resume

Search engine keys: Search engines categorize web sites using any of three key elements (or combinations of the elements): metatags, page title, and page content. The following are tips for getting your web resume high on the list of web search results.

Metatags - You'll need two, one for "description" and one for "keywords."
Page Title - The title appears at the very top of the browser window, and some search engines key on the title content (your name is not needed in the title because employers will not use your name in a search).
Page Content - Be certain to include the keywords you used in your metatags within the page text to increase the strength of the search validation.

The following are examples of metatags which are placed between the <head> and </head> HTML tags. With some HTML editors, you may have to directly edit the HTML code to insert metatags. In the examples, the page designer also incuded a metatag for "author"; although, it is not needed. In creating your web resume, you can use the keyword list you made for your electronic resume.

<meta name="description" content="Professional Resume for Microsoft Certified Professional, CompTIA A+ Certified Computer Service Technician and Network+ Certified Support Specialist">
<meta name="keywords" content="computer,network,specialist,support, technician,administration,administrator,certified,service,A+,A Plus,microsoft, professional, windows,2000,NT,server,workstation,MCP,Me,millennium,98, 95,Net+, Network+,Network Plus,Net Plus,office,xp,word,excel,access, powerpoint, frontpage,Visual Basic,VBA,LAN,WAN">
<meta name="author" content="Sean Dunkin, MCP, Network+, A+, http://sdunkin.sacns.net, sdunkin@sacns.net">

The title is also placed between the head tags. In the following example, the page author used the same verbiage for both the metatag description and title.

<title>Professional Resume for Microsoft Certified Professional, CompTIA A+ Certified Computer Service Technician and Network+ Certified Support Specialist</title>

Maximum Tag Length Guides

Keyword tag length: 800 characters (including spaces and punctuation)
Description tag length: 500 characters
Title tag length: 250 characters

Search engine URL listing: The goal of this exercise in creating metatags is to choose keywords that employers in your career field are most likely to enter in a search engine. Once you post your resume online, don't forget to visit all the major search engines and add your URL to their robot search list. This process is explained further below.

Search engines use automated programs, called robots, web-bots or web crawlers, to scour the web and catalog web sites they locate. If you wait for the robot to find your web site by itself, it may take months or, in the worst case, years before your web site is located and cataloged. By visiting the search engine home page and adding your web resume URL to the search list, the robot will usually catalog your web site in six to eight weeks.

Adding your URL to the Google.com "Googlebot" search list is currently important because the Google database is huge (over 1.3 billion web pages) and used by several search engines (such as Bigfoot.com and AOL's Netfind). Your URL will usually appear in the Google database within two to three weeks. If your web page is not ranked within the first 20-30 sites when you test with keyword searches, closely examine your metatag, title, and resume content; revise the content as needed. Try your test search again a few weeks after uploading your revised page to the web server.

http://www.google.com/addurl.html

You may find it advantageous to know how Google ranks web sites; visit the following page to learn more:

http://www.google.com/technology/index.html

You should add your web site URL to other highly-used search engines which include those in the following list. Many search engines are changing policies in regard to adding URLs to be cataloged—the service is no longer offered free by some search engines (goto.com is one search engine that has changed its free listing policy). Other major search engines may follow this new fee-based listing trend. You will normally find the "Add URL" or "Submit a Site" link at the bottom of the search engine's homepage; sometimes the free URL listing link is very well hidden, so it may take some searching to locate it.