Meta tags for your website
July 19, 2006
Meta tags are important elements of a web page when a search engine indexes it. Meta Tags were originally created to help search engines find out important information about your page that they might have had difficulty determining otherwise.
Although the Meta tag in html is not a required tag when you”re creating your web pages but it can help with your Search Engine Optimization plan for your new website.
The meta tag is used by search engines to allow them to more accurately list your site in their indexes, you may be able to exert a certain amount of control over how your site is indexed by the use of the meta tag. For example, related keywords or a description of the page itself. A search engine to display a short description of what your web page contains very often uses the description Meta tag.
Some search engines look at the keywords entered into the keywords meta tag and will use this to display your page in the search results if it is one of the words used in the search criteria.
You have to remember that meta tags are not the “magic bullet” that will skyrocket your site to the top of all search page listings. They are a tool that will help improve your standings in search engines that use them. Use them with other Internet Marketing strategies to gain more page views and web exposure.
Most search engines look at the body of text on your pages, as well as the page title. They take this information as higher relevance than any meta tags. How to Use a Meta Tag
Meta tags are included in the of an HTML document. If you are using meta tags to improve your standing in search engines, then you should focus on your description and keywords. It follows the usual form of tags, ie < meta name="description" content="website description" >
Keyword Meta tag not to exceed 1024 chars
Description Meta tag not to exceed 250 chars
Make sure you accurately describe the page content in the Description Meta tag.
· Description Meta tag should have 3-4 important key words. Especially those used in title tag and page copy.
· Always Keep important keywords appearing at the beginning of description.
What does a meta tag look like?
There are basically four major meta tags that you can use:
· keywords - Choose whatever keywords you think are appropriate, seperated by commas. Remember to include synoyms, americanisms and so on
< meta name="keywords" content="HTML, Search Engine Optimization, WebMarketWeek, seo, internet marketing">
· description - Depending on the search engine, this will be displayed along with the title of your page in an index. “content” could be a word, sentence or even paragraph to describe your page. Keep the description short and simple
< meta name="description" content="WebMarketWeek is a internet marketing journal with articles about Search Engine Optimization written by Internet Specialists.">
· author - the author’’s name and possibly email address\r\n< meta name="author" content="Alexander">
· document - The only resource type that is currently in use is “document” This is the only tag that you need to put in for indexing purposes\r\n< meta name="resource-type" content="document">
Other Meta Tags:
http-equiv
This attribute is also a name for the name/value pair, but it is used by the server to include that name/value pair in the MIME document header passed to the Web browser before sending the actual HTML document. Some common http-equiv types are:
· charset - defines the character set used in the page\r\n< meta http-equiv="charset" content="iso-8859-1">
· expires - when the document will be out of date
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