Meta Tags:
What are
they?
How do you use them?
Perhaps you've heard of meta tags, but
didn't know what they were or how to use them.
Meta tags, quite simply, are instructions
or key words you can add to your web pages, to help some search engines
describe, classify and index your web site.
There are two meta tags that you should
be concerned with. The first is the description meta tag.
The description meta tag allows you to create the site description that a
search engine will display when someone searches the web.
When a search engine displays the results
of a search, typically you will see a clickable word or title for a site.
You'll also see a short sentence or paragraph describing the site. This
short description may or may not be very meaningful, depending on the site
and the search engine. Some search engines try to create the description
from content on the page itself. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't.
However, the search engines that look at and use your description meta tag
will display the site description YOU specify.
For example, let's say you are selling
pickled peaches from your site. If you create a description meta tag that
says "Paul's Pickled Peaches are the Sweetest Peaches on the Net", then
that's what a person doing a search at some search engines will see (if the
page matches their search).
The second type of meta tag you should
use is the keywords meta tag. As you might imagine from its
name, the keywords tag allows you to "tell" the search engines what keywords
relate to your site. If you want someone who is searching the web to find
Paul's peach site, you would naturally include the word "peach" as a
keyword. In addition, Paul should include other keywords such as peaches,
fruit, pickled, pickle, Georgia, sweet, vegetables, etc.
Your use of creative keywords will help
you get visitors to your site. For example, you should include popular
misspellings (mispellings) of words related to your site. Paul might include
"peeches" as a keyword. Also, consider adding the names of your biggest
competitors to your list of keywords. Do some searches on the keywords you
think your customers will be using. Go to the top 10 sites and take a look
at the keyword meta tags used by these top sites. Here's how to look at the
meta tag:
In MS Internet Explorer, click View, then
click Source from the pulldown menu. In Netscape, click View, then click
Document Source from the pulldown menu. You'll see the code for the web
page. The meta tags will be near the very top.
To add the description or keyword code to
your web pages, follow these examples, and type your own code into your web
pages.
Insert the meta tags after the <HEAD> tag
and before the <TITLE> tag.
Your html will look something like this:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="insert your description here">
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="insert your keywords here">
<TITLE>Insert your title here</TITLE>
</HEAD>
Here's our "pickled peaches" example:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Paul's Pickled Peaches are the Sweetest
Peaches on the Net">
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="peach, peaches, fruit, pickled, pickle,
Georgia, sweet, vegetables, peech, peeches">
<TITLE>Paul's Pickled Peaches</TITLE>
</HEAD>
  TIP:
Your pages should have proper title & meta tags BEFORE you submit to the
search engines. Use the
Meta Manager to make sure you are ready.
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1-604-591-1140
