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Meta Tag Basics
Ok, now that you’ve sorta got the basics down, what do you really need to know about meta tags and optimizing your site?
Meta tags are placed between the tags and they are used to provide information for the search engine spiders - information about your site, which then will make certain that it places #1 in the search engine results pages.
Right?
Wrong.
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Meta tags are not going to guarantee you any type of results. Again - meta tags are not going to get you high rankings.
What you can do with meta tags is provide the search engines that still ‘read’ them some information about your site, as well as control the information that shows up on the search engine results page about your site - the title and description.
There are a lot of meta tags that can be used but basically, you should use:
Let’s break these down a bit:
Title: This tag will be what is displayed on the top of the browser when a visitor is on your page. It is also what will be saved in the ‘favorites’ folder, as well as on the search engine results page listing. It’s important to use a short, descriptive title that uses keywords that you’d like to be found under.
Description: This will be the page description that is displayed under the title on the search engine results page - but ONLY for the spiders that support it. Google does not use this tag and instead creates one of their own, but many spiders still use this tag, or at least part of it.
It’s important to make sure that the information you put in the description gives a clear explanation of the page contents - often, someone searching will have a split second to decide if they click on your link or another. All other things being equal, a good description might sway them to come to your site, instead of another.
Keywords: This tag is supported by very few spiders at this time (Google is not one of them) and using this tag alone is not going to do anything to improve your ranking. HOWEVER, using keywords along with text with the same words (sparingly and WELL WRITTEN) might help improve your rankings on the few engines that use it (Yahoo is one).
NOTE: Repeating a keyword over and over in the keyword tag may actually HARM your ranking and should be avoided at all cost.
NOTE2: This tag is not going to get you where you want to be, which is at the top of the search engine results page. To do that, you’re going to need to use other resources at your disposal. <KEYWORDS - KEI EXPLAINED>
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