First Step: Meta Tags

posted on December 13, 2008

After reading the two previous articles, you are probably interested in optimizing your website for search engines and, in the long run, making more money. There are many ways to do this, but we will start off with one method that is easy and affective. Please note that this is not the one way to make your website popular. A noticeable change in your search engine ranking will require the application of many of the explained methods.

What are Meta tags?

Meta tags are the HTML tags that are placed in the head section of an HTML document to provide information for a search engine bot. The bot will read these tags first, before entering the body of the document.

What Meta tags should I have?

The following meta tags are used by all major search engines:

<title> – Although the title tag is not a “meta” tag, it is very important for website indexing. The text in the title tag will appear at the top of some one’s browser, usually followed by the name of their browser.

The title web page is defined in the tag.

As you can see, the title of an HTML document appears on the title bar of the web browser being used, and is usually followed by the company that created the browser and the browser’s name.

The title of a web page is also included when a user bookmarks the website. It is an important tag for the users of your website, as well as search engines. When search engines index your page, they refer to your title tag. Keep in mind that words that appear first in your title tag are the most important.

<meta name=”description” content=”a short description about my website”> – The meta description tag is important for indexing your website. For most search engines, the content of the meta description tag is displayed under the title of your website. The content of this tag should be short and to the point, but should also supply sufficient information about your website for people seeking your site.

<meta name=”keywords” content=”some, words, that, describe, your, website”> – The meta keywords tag is what determines if your website is shown when a search query is done. The words or phrases should be seperated by commas. You should include synonyms for the key words of your website, including the plural and singular forms of words.

Adding these meta tags is not a sure way to get your website to the top of the search engines, but it is an easy way that everyone can do. All of the pages of your website should include these tags.

Having trouble? We can do this for you. Head over to the About page for my contact information, and feel free to send me a message. I am willing to help you either for free, or for a small cost. More services available on the Services page.

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