Many webmasters focus on the METAtags and lose sight of the importance of the HTML title and the plain-text content of the page. METAtags are brief instructions that you can include in the header of your Web pages.

For instance, the "description" METAtag lets you to enter a few lines that describe the current page. Those words then appear as the description for your page in results lists at AltaVista, instead of the default of the first few lines of text.

But what people don't realize is that for ranking purposes, the HTML title and first lines of text are still very important. METAtags do not take precedence. They are text also. So if your page is poorly designed, with random words associated with graphics, and with a meaningless HTML title, your description METAtags are not going to help your ranking. You would be better off with a page that clearly stated what it was about in the title and the visible content.

You can also have "keyword" METAtags. "Keyword" is a misnomer. Many webmasters misunderstand the purpose of such METAtags and presume that AltaVista acts like a database and that these are the only words on a page that are important for search. On the contrary, AltaVista indexes every word on every page, and every word (and the order in which they appear) is important. The purpose of the "keyword" METAtag is simply to allow you to add synonyms -- words that are appropriate for what's on your page -- that describe what's there but that do not actually appear on that page. One of the best uses for "keyword" METAtags is for foreign translations of the main words on your page, so, for instance, somebody searching in French will find that page.

Many webmasters think that by using "keyword" METAtags, they are getting some advantage in the ranking or making up for the fact that their pages have very little text content, just flashy effects. But, those words are worth little more than any other word in the main text of the page. There is nothing "key" about it. You have simply added a few more words to the page in a place that is not visible.

Why aren't METAtags given precedence? Consider the opportunity for abuse and spamming. What matters most to users of AltaVista is the actual content that is visible on Web pages, not the marketing-oriented notes that have been added in METAtags. And text that appears in the title and the first few lines is likely to be closely related to the main point of the page.