What are Metatags?
Before we start, let's make it clear:
 |
Meta tags are not a
magic solution.
|
|
|
Meta tags are not a
magic solution.
|
|
|
Meta tags are not a magic
solution. |
Meta tags provide a useful way to control
your summary in some search engines. Search engines
supporting meta tags can be found
here. Web page html code starts below, and looks like this:
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<title>5-12 Top Favorite
Keyword Phrases, including company name if important</title>
Secret » Tip:
position the <Title> tag above all other meta tags
<meta name="description"
content="Brian Taylor - webmaster, web site developer, Search
Engine Promotion Pro, Seattle Washington">
TIP: description
to be 25 words or less, or 200-255 characters
<meta
name="keywords" content="brian
taylor,brian,taylor,webmaster,bt, web site promotion, web site
promoter, web site developer, web developer">
TIP:
separated by comas, no space required after coma ... 150 words
or 1000 characters
<meta
http-equiv="bulletin-date"
content="2-27-2007">
NOTE:
non-essential
<meta http-equiv="bulletin-text"
content="Brian Taylor, webmaster, web site developer">
NOTE:
non-essential
<meta http-equiv="reply-to"
content="webmaster@briantaylor.com">
<meta name="author"
content="Brian Taylor">
<meta name="classification"
content="Internet Services"> (more
info on this tag)
<meta name="contactcity"
content="Seattle">
<meta name="contactname"
content="Brian Taylor">
<meta name="contactstate"
content="Washington">
<meta name="copyright"
content="Brian Taylor">
<meta name="createdate"
content="2007">
<meta name="distribution"
content="GLOBAL">
<meta name="generator"
content="FrontPage">
NOTE: this
meta tag is worthless
<meta name="language"
content="en-us">
<meta name="rating"
content="SAFE FOR KIDS">
... (or "General" is fine)
<meta name="resource-type"
content="document">
<meta name="revisit-after"
content="30 Days">
NOTE: this
tag is worthless, not used by any major engines
<meta name="robots"
content="INDEX,FOLLOW">
<meta name="subjects"
content="Internet">
</head>
<body>
... page content here, ie,
images & text, why you exist, your dreams of success, fame,
fortune
</body>
</html>
Visit the HTML Reference Guide for more up to date info on meta tags
OPTIONAL META TAGS
... not all search engines support all meta tags
- <meta http-equiv="refresh"
content="5; URL=home.htm">
- after 5 seconds,
automatically forward browser to home.htm page
- <META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma"
content="no-cache">
- requests browsers not
to cache page (store on hard drive)
- <META NAME="robots"
content="options listed
below in blue">
- ALL
- FOLLOW
- INDEX
(small sites choose this)
- INDEX,NOFOLLOW
- INDEX,FOLLOW
...
(large sites choose this)
- NOINDEX
- NOINDEX,FOLLOW
-
NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW
If you DO NOT have some sort of meta content in
your pages, don’t waste your time submitting your site to major search
engines! Sure, in time the most important search engines will
index your pages - even without meta tags ... and yes, you will probably
be near the last page of search engine search results.
Keep in mind there are over 300,000,000 web
surfers in the world today, and many more web pages than there are web
surfers.
Major engines like AltaVista, InfoSeek, Lycos,
Excite, MSN search, Google and HotBot all rely on the same basic
information when they crawl your site for indexing ... your meta tags.
To see what your meta tags look like, when using
your browser go to "view" then "source" or "page source" » this will
show you the HTML of your web site. Your meta tags should reside
somewhere between your <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags near the top of your
page.
There are three areas you want to work with:
- TITLE ...
by far the most important tag in your
web page. When spidering your site, search engine agents will
go first to the <TITLE> tag. So the title must be as optimally
descriptive as possible, and include several major keywords and/or
keyword-phrases. The <TITLE> tag is what a browser will
display in its title bar, and what a search engine displays when
your site will be listed.
 |
100 Characters Max |
|
|
Example: "The Coffee Shop" is
not descriptive enough! |
|
|
You should have: "The Coffee Shop,
Columbian coffee, Mocha, Arabic, French Roast". Then again,
do people search for "The Coffee Shop" or rather "Coffee Shop"
... you figure it out »
TIP: ancillary or
non-essential words like "the" or "welcome to" are worthless, if
not detrimental.
|
DESCRIPTION ...
your description tags <META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Enter
your description here..."> This tag lets you control what appears as
the summary of your web page, and will be displayed after the Title
of your web site in the search engine index listing. Your
Description tag also supports your Title Keyword tags and Meta
Keywords Tags resulting in optimized search engine placement.
|
|
250 Characters Max
|
KEYWORDS ...
your meta keywords <META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="Enter your
keywords here.."> Very important information for most major search
engines. This information will be not visible to your
visitors, but will help with higher search ranking. Take great
care in producing your keywords, they are the best support for your
Title Tags. When choosing your keywords, do so from an
outsiders point of view. Try to imagine what keywords a viewer
will use to find a site like yours. And remember DON'T SPAM by
placing mass amount of repetitive keywords.
|
|
Never duplicate keywords or
keyword-phrases in your Meta Keywords list! |
|
|
Maximum acceptable repetition of
keyword-phrases inside the page text
(not talking Meta Tags here) is 7 times, but keep it under 5 to
be universally cool. |
|
|
1000 Characters Max, separated by
comas, spaces not required after comas. |
The 3 steps above will give you a fighting chance
amongst the millions ... Try it!
|
