META Tags
One of the most misunderstood, misused, and under-used features of
HTML is META tags. What are META tags? Well, they are not the answer to
all of your problems. They won't make your site instantly popular. What
they will do is provide some search engines the information they need to
correctly categorize, describe, and rank your site. Not all search
engines use them, but many do. We'll take a look at the most important
ones here.
Every page needs META tags
Every page on your site needs META tags. Most search engines use what
is called a spider. A spider is a program that scans and indexes a web
page, harvests the links from the page, follows the links to new pages,
and starts all over again. Since a spider will index every page on
a site, every page needs META tags.
Title
OK, the title tag is not a META tag, but I can't believe how many
sites I visit that don't have a title. The title is what shows up in the
title bar of the visitor's browser. It is also what search engines use
for the title of your site when they list it.
Your title should be short and sweet and it should actually be the
title of your web page. Do not fill it with key words. Imagine how
stupid my listing in Alta Vista would look if my title were "META
Tags, Website Design, Search Engine Submission, Useful Tools, and Other
Great Stuff." You can put that kind of list in your Description or
Keywords META tags. It is appropriate to put some of your keywords in
the Title, just don't overdo it.
Don't use the same title on every page of your website. Mine usually
say "XXXX at JamesGLewis.com" That way the visitor knows what
the page is about and who provided it. It also means that every one will
be different.
Use title case for your Title tag.
<title>Meta
Tags at JamesGLewis.com</title>
Description
The Description META tag is usually used in conjunction with the
Title in search engine results. Try to keep your description under 200
characters in length. Usually only the first 20 words will be displayed.
Put the most important, attention-grabbing information at the beginning
of your description because that is what the searcher will see first.
Once again, your description needs to describe the page, not be
filled with keywords. Descriptions should be one or two brief sentences
with normal sentence case. Capitalize the first word and end it with a
period. Browse the Open
Directory Project and see what the title and descriptions should
look like. As with the title, it is OK to put keywords in your
description, just don't overdo it.
<meta name="description"
content="META tag strategies for
webmasters from James G. Lewis.">
Keywords
blah blah blah blah
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