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The Last Issue:
11.18.03
Meta Tags
The theme of this article has come from several requests which we received to talk about Meta Tags and their role in search engine ranking. This is one of those requests:
Thank you for the insite into getting more hits on a web site. My
own sites tend to dangle out there with very little interest from the
surfers. I do have one question, though. How much help do you get from
META entries? http://www.angelfire.com/space/mark_twain
Henry Lefevre
Dear Henry, thanks for your question. We will devote this article entirely on Meta Data. But we want to warn you that to gain ranking, your web pages need MORE than properly built Meta Tags. Search engine ranking depends on numerous factors, and Meta Data is only one of them.
For those who barely know what Meta Tags are, let us explain. Please open your web site. Then click on View > Source in your browser menu. It will open a text file with HTML code of your home page. Now please look at the beginning of the code. We've opened the source of TacoPlate.com, one of the latest web sites we have created. We've simplified and shortened it here for you so it looks more understandable:
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=windows-1251">
<title>TacoPales</title>
<meta name="description" content="Taco plates keep tacos
in upright position. No more messy tacos. Taco recipes are available">
<meta name="keywords" content="taco plates, tacos, disposable
plates, taco parties, children tacos, tacoplates">
</head>
Let's look at lines between <head> and </head> Tags. These are the 3 most important Meta Tags here which should be a must on every web page - title, description and keywords.
Unfortunately many web design companies forget about building Meta Tags when they create a web site. We don't understand why though. As a result, the Internet has a lot of pretty-looking web sites with good content that are not recognized by search engine robots and doomed to sink into oblivion.
Let's compare a web page to a live person. We all need documents, don't we? We need a Social Security number, Drivers License, etc. Can you imagine your life without any IDs or documents? There is a Russian proverb: "Without documents, you are nothing".
Same rules work for web sites. Meta Tags are a web page's ID. With ID, search engines recognize the web page. Without properly built metatags your web pages are ignored or ranked very low by search engines.
Some of our documents are very important while others are important just for a particular sphere. Different Meta Tags have different weights of importance. Let's consider each Meta Tag individually.
Title
This is the most important Meta Tag. The Title Meta Tag is a name of your web page. Choose a title for your web page with much thought as you would choose a name for your own baby. But while some parents try to find a very original and rare name for their child, you should pick the most common and searchable words for your web page's title. Let's go to google.com, perform a search with... hmm, let's say the word "art" and look closely at the search result. All web pages, listed in top 10, have the word "art" in the title:
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: metmuseum.org
- Art on the Net (art.net)
- Art.com - Your Home For Prints, Posters & Custom Framing
- National Gallery of Art
- MoMA.org | The Museum of Modern Art
- Fine Art - World Wide Arts Resources - Contemporary Art - ...
- ART HISTORY RESOURCES ON THE WEB: Contents
- artnet.com
- Art Crimes: The Writing on the Wall
- ArtToday, Inc -- Online subscriptions for royalty-free stock ...
Get the point? The title of your web page should be keyword-rich. Don't call your pages "About Us" or "Contact". Nobody searchs the Internet with keyphrases "about us" or "contact". Think which words you would use if you needed to find a web site like yours - and use these words in your web page titles.
Description
Description is the second most important Meta Tag. Please look at our search result again. Notice that the top 10 web sites have the keyword "art" not only in their titles, but also in descriptions, and sometimes even several times:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Web site features information on upcoming museum events, fine art exhibits, special exhibitions, the Met collection and art ...
An online catalogue of the beautiful ancient Egyptian art collection housed in the New York Metropolitan...
Writing a description informs search engines what your web page is about. Write 1-3 sentences in proper language. Don't be too verbose. Let's look at your drivers license. On this little piece of plastic your can find all the main information about yourself: date of birth, height, weight, color of eyes, sex, address and maybe an SSN. Follow this rule while creating the description Meta Tag: give the MAIN information in a SHORT piece of writing.
If the description tag is missed (like in the code of Henry's web page), a search engine robot will use the first paragraph as a description. This is how Henry's web site is listed on Google:
THE GOOSE DROPPINGS HOME SITE
THE GOOSE DROPPINGS HOME SITE. By Henry L. Lefevre. Did you know that geese can walk on water? Here's proof. Goose_Droppings. Goose Lovers Beware. Goose Chasers. ...
If you look at this web site content, you see that the Googlebot picked up the first text which it has found on the page - the headline, the author's signature, plus text of 3 links. All together as a description, they don't make much sense. What you need to improve your web page's appearance in search engines is to write a couple of sentences for the content of the description Meta Tag and place the tag <head> in your HTML document.
Keywords
Your degree / diploma is important when you look for employment. But when you go to the doctor, all of your degrees and recognitions are useless, aren't they? Same thing happens with the keywords Meta Tag.
Currently, most search engines don't take keyword tags into account. The keyword Meta Tag has lost its importance because of spammer's abusing this tag with keyword stuffing. But some search engines still use it with limitation. For example, search engine robots compare keywords in <head> with real content of the web page, and if the words don't match, your keywords are ignored. Another rule - same keywords shouldn't be repeated more than 3 times in the keywords Meta Tag. Robots will ignore them. Some engines also have a limit for length of keywords content, but it is different for all search engines. Just make sure you don't put too many words in the keywords Meta Tag. We suggest to take 3-5 keyword phrases and optimize your web page for them, and use other keyword phrases on your remaining pages.
All other Meta Tags are not as important as Title, Description and Keywords. It is up to you whether or not to use them. They give some information to search engine robots, but don't influence the web site ranking.
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