Using meta-tags to please search engines

Using meta tags:

In computer science "meta" is a common prefix meaning "about". In the case of web pages, meta tags are the code at the top of your page used to explain what your page is about to the search engines. Meta tags are not seen by the user, but are used by search engines when they decide how to categorize and index your page (or put more simply, where they will put your page in their index). The tags should go between the <head> and </head> tags at the start of your page.

There are many meta tags that apply to web pages, but you must make sure that you include at least these two:

<html>
<head>
<title>your page title here</title> <META name="description" content="describe your website here.">

<META name="keywords" content="put your keywords here">
</head>

AltaVista, Excite, HotBot/Inktomi, Infoseek, Lycos, Web Crawler, and Northern Light currently all use meta tags to rank pages, although their importance is lessening.

If a user of a search engine types in a keyword that is included in your meta tags, you are much more likely to be near the top of the rankings. Some engines use your meta-description as the basis of the description that will be displayed in their search results, so it is important to choose your wording carefully. If the meta tags are not included at all, the engine is forced to just grab text off your page to print next to the results.

For example, a search for "fried chicken" with AltaVista, gives the following result on page 4:

The Northwest Company Inc.
inuit,north,west,company,Canada,northern,stores,store,northwest,selections,
market,employment,job,opportunity,warehouse,manager,management,grocery,nwc...
URL: http://www.northwest.ca/ • Related pages • Translate

(note: AltaVista no longer uses meta tags as the basis for its description in the results listing)

Whoever designed the page wanted to cram as many keywords into the meta tags as he could, and as a result made identical tags for both "keywords" and "content", resulting in the poor description above. Many users who would ordinarily wanted to visit the site will have been put off by the confusing listing. Filling your meta tags with a huge list of keywords will be punished by many search engines as "spamming"

If you are unsure about writing meta tags, use the form below, which will simplify the process for you.

Or optimise your meta tags using Receptional's optimisation service.

Once you have put keywords into your page, you should analyse your page for keyword density bearing in mind that most search engines punish sites that use the same keyword too many time on one page.

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