How To Use Meta-tags
You can control how search
engines catalog your site with two types of HTML tags.
These meta tags are part of the HTML code that search
engine crawlers look for but visitors to your pages never
see.
1 - Title tag: This is the
text that you normally see in the top left hand corner
of the browser when you visit a WebPages. It is also used
as the highlighted link that you click on in search engines.
It should be about 5 to 15 words in length and include
your most important keywords / key phrase.
<title>WebPages title</title>
2 - Description tag: This
lets you specify a short summary that appears below the
WebPages title on a search engine listing. This is what
the person sees to decide if your website is worth visiting.
Again, your most important keywords / Key phrases as close
to the beginning as possible. You should expand the title
concept here. The description should be no longer than
160 characters.
<meta name="description"
content="Short description of your WebPages.">
3 - Keyword tag: Lets you
specify the keywords that a search engine should give
precedence to when cataloging the page. Keywords are typically
given less importance than words in the title, but more
importance than words found in the page's body.
<meta name="keywords"
content="this is where your keywords go, separated by
commas.">
Here are some guidelines
and tips for selecting keywords:
1 - Make a list of relevant
keywords that you think people will search for when they
are looking for a website like yours.
2 - Make sure your keywords
include both general and specific words related to your
site. Your keyword meta tag should be less than 1000 characters
in length, including spaces and commas.
3 - If you are finding it
difficult to think of keywords that people will enter
in their searches, then use a thesaurus and copy some
from your competitor's Web sites. By the way, I didn't
tell you that!
4 - Make your keywords plural,
where possible. Add a "s" to the end of keywords. Otherwise
if someone searches for, lets say "forms", it will not
match the keyword "form" in your meta tag. But if the
person searches for "form", it will match it with "forms",
as the whole word is contained with your keyword.
5 - List the most important
keywords first as some search engines give precedence
to keywords near the beginning.
6 - If your keywords are
difficult to spell, list various misspellings of the keywords.
People will often misspell a search word. So if the misspelled
words matches your misspelled keyword then your website
will appear in the listing, whereas your competitors won't.
7 - Some search engines are
case sensitive. So, if you some of your keywords are names,
such as London or Michael, and people are likely to enter
in the keyword, with the first letter capitalized, list
them with the first letter capitalized.
8 - Don't repeat keywords
too often. Only repeat it about 3/4 times, otherwise you
may be penalized.
9 - Don't hide keywords in
the background. In the old days, people used to hide keywords
by displaying it the same color as the background. So
you can not see it on the screen, but it is listed in
the page.
This tactic worked when search
engines were unsophisticated and judged a keyword's relevance
only by the number of times it appeared on a page. Now,
most search engines know about this trick and count only
the first few occurrences of a keyword or phrase.
Search engines will penalize
your page, by placing it further down the list or not
listing it at all.
10 - Go to the search engine,
www.goto.com, and use their free keyword suggestion tool.
Enter in a search term and it will return similar search
terms that their visitors have entered to search with.
It also gives the number of times that it has been entered,
so you also know how popular it is.
TOP
Where Do These Meta-Tags
Go?
These tags typically go between
the head tags of an HTML page, like this:
<head>
<title>Webpage title</title>
<meta name="description" content="Short description
of your WebPages.">
<meta name="keywords" content="this is where your keywords
go, separated by commas.">
</head>
<body> Main body.
</body>
Some people list the keywords
tag before the description tag. I haven't found any evidence
that this matters too much, although it is said that keywords
found nearer the beginning of the document have more importance
attached to them.
What Are The Rules
For Effective Search Engine Cataloguing?
Title: Max. 60 characters
(including commas, spaces, etc.) Description: Max. 160
characters Keywords: Max. 1,000 characters
The number of characters
allowed by the various search engines vary, and the above
figures are only a general guideline.
Although you are allowed
anywhere up to 1,000 characters in the keyword tag, I
don't recommend that you use up all 1,000 characters.
As too many keywords can dilute their effectiveness.
Patience
