SolveYourProblem
Internet Marketing Series
How Do I Use Meta Tags Effectively?
There
are a number of online urban legends that suggest meta
tags and the use of them are dead and no
longer necessary to build effective web pages. Many people
believe that search engines are too smart to look for meta
tags. This, however, is completely untrue. Search
engines have gotten smarter, but meta tags are as important
as ever. Search engines now compare
the words in the title, the keywords, and the description
of the article to help users find the
best possible search engine results. Meta tags are vital
to good search engine results.
For
those new to the term, meta tags are parts of HTML
coding on websites that are used by search engines,
like Google, Yahoo, and MSN, to index a website. Most meta-tags
are put
in the header code of a website. There are a number of different
possible meta tags including the abstract meta tag, the author
meta tag, the copyright meta tag, the description meta tag,
the distribution meta tag, the expires meta tag, the keyword
meta tag, the language meta tag, the refresh meta tag, the
revisit meta tag, and the robots meta tag. The most
important and most popular meta tags are the title, description,
and
keywords meta tags. Different search engines offer
different rules about how the meta tags are used formatted,
and how
many characters they are allowed to contain.
Most
search engines will use varying combinations of your meta
tags, so it is important to be patient with the entire
process. The title tag should be both the name of your company
and some keywords. Some search engines make use of the title
as the link for your own website. That means if you don't
include a title, customers won't see one. They might see
something like “no title.” Few people would click on a site
without a title. Having keywords with your title will help
to improve your search engine rankings. Since research shows
that most people only deal with the first ten results any
search engine sends them, having a better ranking can only
be good for your business. It is also important to remember
that many places list sites in alphabetical order. Typically
these sites give symbols preference over letters. That means
that, “#1 Dog Information and Product Site” would come before,
“The Best Dog Site on the Internet”. There are many things
to consider with Meta tags though, and there are many things
to learn, so don't take a piece of information like that
and focus only on it.
The
description meta tag is a good place to repeat
the keywords you've used in your title meta tag and add
a few key phrases
while you're at it. You not only want something that will
catch the attention of a search engine, but you also need
something that will be understandable for human eyes. Some
search engines will use this meta tag to describe your site
to searchers, but if your tag is just garbage to catch the
search engine eye, chances are good that users may not be
inclined to click on a poor description.
In
order to benefit the most from your meta tag usage, follow
these tips.
