How To Get The Most Out of Meta Tags

Meta tags can provide useful information to the some of the search engine spiders that will come visit your site after you submit it. You code meta tags into your HTML document, however they are not seen by someone viewing your page. They go between the head tags as shown here. You can have meta tags on all of the webpages of your website that you want found in search engines.

The purpose of keyword meta tags is to highlight certain words contained in the text on the page. You choose the words that you want the seach engine robot to pay the most attention to. The purpose of the description meta tag is to briefly describe the contents of the page. While most search engines no longer pay much attention to keyword meta tags, the description meta tag is still sometimes used. Google often uses it as a website's description in their search results. The title tag is also important - many search engines will display that title in their search results.

Here is what the HTML code looks like for some meta tags:



<head>

<title>Your Descriptive Title Goes Here</title>

<META NAME="author" CONTENT="Your Name">

<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="list of keywords goes here, separated by commas">

<META NAME="description" CONTENT="brief description of your page goes here">

</head>



A Meta Tag Example


Example of Meta Tags and a Title for a general page on the Beatles:
(If you have a more specific page, such as one on Sgt. Pepper, you should add keywords about that particular topic.)



<head>

<title>The Beatles: A Liverpool Odyssey</title>

<META NAME="author" CONTENT="John Doe">

<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="beatles, paul mccartney, john lennon, ringo starr, richard starkey, george harrison, british invasion, sixties, 60's, rock music, rock and roll, liverpool, england, fab four, beatle">

<META NAME="description" CONTENT="An information page for sixties rock icons the Beatles from Liverpool, England.">

</head>



Your Title Counts

Yes, it matters what you put between the title tags <title> </title> on your webpage(s). If you have a U2 page, don't put something like "My PopMart Photo Page" as the title. Use "Photos from U2's PopMart Shows" instead. Otherwise your page may get overlooked if someone uses "U2" as a keyword in their search, or your page may end up further down the list of all the U2 sites. Also, the search engines generally list your page under your chosen title so think about how you want someone to see your page if they find it in a search engine. Do you want someone to see "Bill's Cool U2 Page"? Or "A Complete History of U2's PopMart Tour"? Be descriptive.



main page | meta tags | search engines | getting links



Cool Sites... The Art & Nature of Fresco Painting PosterPlanet.Net - Movie & TV Posters