Understanding Meta Tags and Keywords - Your Roadmap Guide to Search Engine Success

What Are Meta Tags?

Quite simply, Meta Tags are a bunch of code located invisibly at the top or 'header' of your website pages. They include vital information about your page for the search engine robots that sweep the internet regularly. This information is stored in their database, ready to be queried by the search engine user.

That information consists of page title, description, target keywords, page author, subject, language and other techie details too. Now there have been some idiots in the internet marketing niche posting in forums, saying that the Meta tags are not important. In fact they are important, because you want TARGETED traffic to your site for free, right?

Now Google used to rely solely on the Meta tags. But nowadays, the Googlebots also parse the paragraphs text for target keywords, including page headers for relevance. But too many keywords in the content are bad, so don't over-do it.

The Structure of the Meta Tag Code in Page Header

Now, non techies may feel overwhelmed when viewing a page of HTML code. Yes, I can look daunting at the start. But for now, all you need to be focussing on for now is the "header" section, the first section of the web page at the top. Now I assume you have designed your page in an HTML editor. So in your editor, switch over to code view then look at the code between the HEAD and /HEAD tags.

Here's a bare bones example:

title PAGE TITLE /title

META NAME="Reply-to" CONTENT="youATmyemail.com"

META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Your Name"

META NAME="Subject" CONTENT="SUBJECT"

META NAME="Description" CONTENT="SHORT DESCRIPTION"

META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="KEYWORD1,KEYWORD2,etc"

META NAME="Language" CONTENT="English"

META NAME="Revisit-after" CONTENT="15 days"

META NAME="Distribution" CONTENT="GLOBAL"

META NAME="Robots" CONTENT="All"

META NAME="Rating" CONTENT="GENERAL"

META NAME="Classification" CONTENT="Internet Marketing"

Now let's take a look at the most important ones in more detail:

PAGE TITLE

The title should contain your top keyword and if possible some secondary keywords. Don't overdo it here, but make it attract eyeballs from the search engine listings.

META NAME="Reply-to" CONTENT="youATmyemail.com"

This is where you assign the email address you wish to use for site visitor contact. You should never have your email address among site body content, because the spam spider harvesters will grab it and begin sending you tons of spam.

META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Your Name"

Just enter your name here. If someone searches Google using your name, they'll find you more easily. Now if you're a black hatter, you won't be putting your contact details in your Meta tags or page content, as well as on domain name registration. I don't condone black hat SEO methods because they don't work in the long run, because people are more savvy these days and will compare details of your site with WHOIS database.

META NAME="Subject" CONTENT="SUBJECT"

The subject of your web page. Be specific here - must relate to content.

META NAME="Description" CONTENT="SHORT DESCRIPTION"

This one is important as it will show up in the search engines below your page title link. Include your main keywords, your top 3 or 4. It should make sense and include a benefit that your webpage can provide.

META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="KEYWORD1,KEYWORD2,etc"

First go to the free Google Keyword Research tool, enter in your main keyword or keyword phrase. A list of 50 will appear. Now to get the most searched for keywords, click on the top of the 'Global Monthly Searches' column to arrange the results from top to bottom in order of highest searches. Now select the top 10 and copy/paste into notepad. Also note a few other keywords your prospective visitors may type in.

Don't go overboard here, about ten or so targeted words is sufficient.

META NAME="Language" CONTENT="English"

Only change this if your website is for a non English speaking country.

META NAME="Revisit-after" CONTENT="15 days"

Tells the Googlebots to re-spider your site twice a month. Set this to whatever suits you best. If you update your site daily, set this to 1 day, and so on.

META NAME="Distribution" CONTENT="GLOBAL"

Keep this one to distribute globally. Again, only change this if your site is country specific.

META NAME="Robots" CONTENT="All"

This tells the robots whether or not to index the page. "All" will index everything, while "No-Follow" will block the robot software adding your site to the search engine database. Do this if your page is for a private group.

META NAME="Rating" CONTENT="GENERAL"

Set to GENERAL so it's open to all eyeballs, old and young. If it's an adult based site, change this to ADULT

META NAME="Classification" CONTENT="Internet Marketing"

The top level category for your web pages. Choose wisely.

That just about covers all the main Meta tag information you'll need to have you site up and ready for info hungry search engine visitors.

All the Best,

Neil Harland - Author

A Toolkit for the Non-techies - Instant Meta Tag Creator - Free
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Optimizing Your Meta Tags for SEO

Meta tags are special HTML tags that do not modify the look of the webpage, but provide the search engines with information about the webpage. There are some attributes of the Meta tags that are super important and some that are not. You should include Meta tags on each and every page of your website, so that search engines can index those pages easier. Google does not require you to place Meta tags on your site, but some search engines will rank you higher if you do. While Google does account for over 60 percent of all search traffic on the internet, the other search engines still count for at least 40 percent. If you are looking for traffic, then every qualified visitor counts. It does not matter if a sale came from Google's traffic or Yahoo's. Also, why rely on just 60 percent when you can rely on closer to 100 percent, and Google will rank you slightly higher for having your Meta tags match your webpage's content.

Format of the Meta Tag

I will dissect a Meta tag and its attributes so that we can get a better understanding of what a Meta tags does for a website. If we look at the attributes of the Meta tag, then some may apply to the website and some may not. In order to make your Meta tags you need to decide what your page is about. It is not enough to just decide on a title. You need to pick keywords that best describe your content. Your keywords need to be descriptive of the content, or if you have not written the content yet, your content should be about the keywords. There are many aspects to keywords, and this part of your SEO could literally take months if you are not careful. For simplicity, I will give a quick method of choosing keywords. This is not in full detail, but it should help.

What is a Keyword?

Keywords are words or phrases that a searching party types into a search engine's search bar. If you did a search for golden eggs, then golden eggs would be the keyword. If you want to make sure you are writing articles that will be both useful to the reader and useful monetarily to you, then you need to do some keyword research. Simply go to the Google Keyword Research tool and type your keywords into the space provided. The results could be around 800 keywords, and you can manipulate the output for the desired information. You should look for keywords that have over 2000 global searches. Once you find a keyword that passes the global searches, then you need to click the keyword to do a Google search on them. You are searching these keywords to see the page ranks of the competing pages. You will need a tool bar to see the page ranks of the search results. A really good and free tool bar is made by SEO Book called the "SEO Toolbar." Just install the toolbar and you will be able to find a lot of the information you will need for your optimizations. Now when you do your searches on the keyword results in the Google Keyword Tool you will notice a lot of new information appended to some of the search results. That is information about the website's traffic, links and page rank. Just click the "?" next to the information you want and it should appear in its place. If the appended information is not there, then you simply open each page to see its page rank in the toolbar. SEO Book has extensive information about how to use their product, so I will limit my explanation. You are trying to find the page ranks of the top ten web pages that Google has on the keyword. If all ten pages are a page rank of 4 or higher and use the exact keyword in their content then you will want to find a less difficult keyword. There is a whole bunch more information on keyword research than this, but this will help you get started.

Here is some sample Meta tags:

< title >Optimizing Your Meta Tags for SEO< /title >

< meta name="description" content="Internet Marketing is easier to do if you plan for SEO. Optimizing your Meta tags for SEO can be confusing. " >

< meta name="author" content="Charles Ross" >

< meta name="copyright" content="Universal-Marketer Inc." >

< meta name="keyphrases" content="Internet Marketing, Optimizing your meta tags for SEO, Search Engine Optimization with Meta tags" >

The above is a group of five Meta tags that could be located in between the head tags on a page that hosts this article. Let us look at each one.

1. Title- This is the title that is in the top bar of the browser. You should try to fit your keywords in the title. You should limit your titles to around 64 or less characters in length. Keep it to the point. Do not try to just stuff words in the title.
2. Description- This is what people see under the hypertext results when they search for something. You should use your keywords in complete sentences to provide your description. This will allow you to prove to the reader that you have what they are looking for too. You want to keep your description to around 155 or less characters, and you want to use your keywords in them.
3. Author and Copyright- This is just to help protect your copyright, but it may also help with branding your name too. It is not necessary though.
4. Keyphrases- This is the plural of keywords. You will not want to put just one word keywords in your Meta tag, so you simply use the "keyphrases" attribute to allow you to place your keyword phrases into the Meta tag.

Those Meta tags are what I consider the most important, but there are some optional ones that may be of interest to you.

Examples of the optional ones to consider are:

< meta name="googlebot" content="follow,index" >

< meta name="robots" content="all" >

< meta name="revisit-after" content="1 days" >

Here is the listing for the above tags:

1. googlebot- This instructs the googlebot what to do when it reaches your site. You only use this if you just want to talk to the googlebot and not the other robots.
2. robots- This is the same as googlebot except it is for all the robots and crawlers not just Google's.
3. revisit-after- This is the frequency that you want the robots to crawl your site. If you are adding stuff daily then you want it to set "1 days" to the attribute. But if it you only add stuff weekly then "7 days" or "1 weeks" will do.

You will use these only if you want to tell the search engines what to do when they come to your website. If these tags are not used then the default is that the googlebot and robots tags are set to "all" and the "revisit-after" tag is set to 1 month or what ever the search engine has them set to.

There are still many more Meta tags you can use on your website, but the ones that I have provided will work in most cases. You can find the other Meta tags by doing a search for "full list Meta tags" or something of that nature. You should now be on your way to a good foundation for the SEO of your site.

Hello my name is Charles Ross. I am a full time internet marketer. I have been studying internet marketing off and on for years. I have seen many opportunities come and go right before my eyes. I have watched the internet grow into a teenager. I have sat on the side lines for far too long. I have decided it is time for me to seek out the truth, so I am dedicating my site Universal-Marketer to finding the Truth About Internet Marketing.

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SEO Meta Tags Do Work

SEO or search engine optimization is an ongoing battle for all of us, as we fight to have our web pages get higher ranking in the big search engines like Bing, Yahoo and of course Google. But did you know there are a few things that you can do on your site to not only increase ranking, but also ensure the people searching will click your site.

At the top of any websites or blogs source code Meta Tags if written well can help drive targeted traffic to your site. There are two main tags that webmasters should make sure to utilize when creating new web pages or posts for their site. The first is the description tag, this is a short introduction to your website or blog that will be placed under the title of your web page or blog post whenever your site comes up in the search engines results for a key word or phrase. Even if you manage to get your site ranked well it is essential that both the title and description tags will ensure your website gets clicked.

The second tag of important is the key word tag, this tag let you place words or phrases held with in your pages. Due to a phrase know as key word stuffing many search engines do not consider these tags as important as they did in the past but it can't hurt to add a few relevant words or phrases within this tag it may just help.

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Optimizing Meta Tags to Increase Your Site's Visibility

Meta tags are added to a webpage to increase its visibility in the search engine. The Meta tags consist of three important components which are title, description and keyword. The title is the most commonly used Meta tag. It is displayed on top of the browser window. It acts as the title of the document. The Meta description is not shown on the browser but it is shown in the search result. The Meta description is often used in a webpage that does not contain text content. For example, in an art gallery site, the whole page displays only the picture. Since no text is placed on the site, you have to use the Meta description to optimize it with keywords. The Meta tags are usually added under the head tags. The Meta tags for each page should be unique. In this way, you can avoid duplication problem.

You should use a different Meta tags for each page in the website. The best keyword research tool for researching keyword is the Google AdWords keyword tool. The new Google AdWords keyword tool offers many improved functions. The keyword tool allows you to analyze a keyword based on the competition, number of searches, CPC and etc. The Meta keywords is the least important of all the Meta tags. Some people like to take advantage of the Meta keywords by spamming it with a huge list of keywords.

The Meta keywords should not exceed more than 255 characters. If the Meta keywords exceed 255 characters, it will be considered spam by the search engine. Your site may be blacklisted by the search engine as a spam site because of including too many keywords. You can use multiple word as one keyword. In order for the search engine to recognize a phrase as a single keyword, you have to use the comma. The most important keyword should be positioned in front followed by the less important keywords.

The title and description should be written properly so that people will be interested in viewing the web page. Sometimes, the search engine will display the Meta description in the search result if it couldn't find any keyword in the article. It is important to optimize the Meta title and description with keywords. By optimizing the Meta title and description, you will be able to rank well in the search engine. The keyword you use must have low competition. You should not use misspelled keywords in your Meta tag. Though misspelled keywords have small competition, it will drop your search engine ranking if you use it. The search engine knows that you are trying to manipulating it so it will never rank you. Using misspelled keyword also cause people to think that your site is unprofessional. When people see that your site is unprofessional, they will avoid it and won't consider buying your product. In addition, the keyword phrase you use must be meaningful. If the keyword phrase is not meaningful, the search engine will consider you as a spammer.

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Easy Search Engine Optimization - Meta Tags Are Vital! But Not in the Way You Think

Back in the early days of SEO, it was all about meta tags. If you wanted to rank well for "pasta making," you could stuff your meta tags full of the phrase "pasta making" over and over and over again, and you'd start to rank well assuming all of your competitors weren't doing it.

Well, do you really think Google wouldn't catch on? Of course they did. And now meta tags are largely useless as an SEO tool as far as ranking is concerned. But that doesn't mean that they're useless when you're trying to optimize for search engines! Sounds contradictory, right? It's not. Read on.

Meta tags are the code in your webpages that are invisible to viewers unless they specifically go into their browser's option to show the page's source. (I can't paste samples here because HTML is stripped out of these articles, but you can look it up in HTML references.)

"This page is about pasta" name="description" />

"pasta making" name="keywords" />

"description" content="This page is about pasta" />

"keywords" content="pasta making" />

And let's throw in one more. It's not technically meta data, but I'm being creative here and taking you in a direction you didn't know I was going to go.

So like I said, stuffing keywords into the keywords meta tag really isn't going to get you anything. So really, you can toss that out. Put your keywords in there for the heck of it, but don't pay it much attention beyond that.

I'm really interested in two things:

1. The title tag

2. The description meta tag

Why? Because it's what viewers see when they finally do bring up your page in the listings. You do need to get in good with Google to get to the top of their listings for a keyword phrase.

But you need to get in good with the SEARCHER (the real person) if you actually want to get any clicks to your site. A lot of people forget there is actually a human involved.

Let's pretend you are trying to rank for "pasta making." So you put "pasta making" everywhere. You call the homepage of your site "pasta making" in the

Basic, brainless SEO, right? Repeat your phrase a lot. And if you've done it well, maybe you're #1 when people search for pasta making.

But thanks to your careless use of the title and description tags, here's what comes up in Google:

Pasta Making

pasta making - pasta making website for good pasta making

pastamakingsite.com/pasta-making/pasta-making-for-pasta-making.html - 50k - Cached - Similar pages

Congratulations. You have created the spamiest looking listing ever. Nobody's going to click that if they actually want information.

So do your SEO right, but then think of the person and how they'll see your site when they find it. Craft your title and description so it actually looks like a site worth visiting. You have to make them click for it to be worth a thing!

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