Meta Tags
Search Engine Optimisation Tips
META tags are used to help some search engines index your page, especially if your page has frames. META tags should be placed between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags of your document. The most common META tags are going to look like this:
<HEAD>
<TITLE>KEYWORD</TITLE>
<META name=” ” content=” “>
</HEAD>
The name=” ” will indicate what type of meta tag you are using. The content=” ” will be the content of the tag you provide for the search engine. To make more sense of this, lets look at the META “keywords” tag.
META Keywords Tag
<META name=”keywords” content=”meta tags, search, homepage, web sites”>
- name=”keywords”
informs the search engine’s spider that a group of keywords should be in this tag. - content=”meta tags, search, homepage, web sites”
is your list of keywords and key phrases. In the “keywords” tag, you separate each keyword or key phrase by placing a comma between them.
Be careful not to repeat the same thing too many times here, and be sure the keywords are relevant to the content on your page. Always do your home work when choosing your keywords. Search Engines are cracking down on sites who use these tags to repeat the same word over and over in order to get a better listing, or using keywords that have nothing to do with the content of the page. Be warned Google will sandbox your site!
META Description Tag
The next useful META tag gives a description of your page. Here it is:
<META name=”description” content=”How to add META tags to your page.”>
- name=”description”
tells the search engine’s spider a description of the page is to follow. - content=”How to add META tags to your page.”
is your very own description of your web page. Type in what you want the description of your page to be, and use your keywords/phrases as part of the decription. Search Engines use this as the description that will appear in their listings.