Meta Tags Tips

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Meta tags a very important step in search engine ranking if done properly. This page covers the basics of meta tags and meta tag optimization tips from search engines point of view to improve your ranking.

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Meta Tags Tips

What Are Meta Tags?

Meta tags are Special "Html" tags inserted in the web page for explaining the search engines what the page is all about. These tags are not visible to the user but occasionally some search engines display meta description tag in their results.

Meta tags Are Magic tags

Magic There Is No Magic In Search Engines Positioning And People Have A Misconception That Meta Tags And Just Meta Tags Can Get Their websites Good Rankings With Search Engines Which Is Absolutely Wrong They Might Give Your Websites Rankings Boost If Used properly. In Some Cases And Over The Period Of Time Importance Of Meta Tag Has Reduced.

*Note-Remember That Not All Search Engines Use Meta Tags Hence They Are Not As Important As They Used To Be.

Meta Tags Tutorial

Meta tags go in the <HEAD> </HEAD> segment of your html document and are especially for search engines.

The two meta tags which are most important from the search engines point of view are "Description" and "Keywords" tag

Meta Description Tag
Description-Some Search Engines use the content of the description tag as the site description in their result and also look in description tag for keyword matches

Syntax Of Meta Tags
(Check Your Syntax Two Times)
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Enter Your Site Description Here About 150 Characters">

Meta Keywords Tag
Meta Keywords Tag-this tag is not shown. it only tells the search engines what keywords are important for the particular page.

Syntax Of Meta Tags
(Check Your Syntax Two Times)
<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="Enter, Your, Site, Keywords Here">

Normally keywords in meta tags are separated by comma. comma is take as "Or" While space is taken as "And". However there is some evidence That when keywords are separated by a space the search engines make their own combination of keyword by itself.

Meta Tag Optimization Tips

Arrange the keywords in the Meta tags in order of importance.

When you have several occurrences of the same words in the Meta tags use different capitalization such as: promotion, Promotion, and PROMOTION. The general rule of thumb, however, is to keep everything in lower case.

It is also a good idea to add common misspellings of some of your keywords into your Meta tags if you have some room. For example "promotion" could be spelled "promotion" by someone who is typing fast.

Think of one or two main keywords for your site, and make them appear 5-6 times each on your front page.

Some search engines will look for "keyword density", meaning how far apart the keywords appear. Some will only look at the first 200 characters of your site, and count the number of times the keyword appears. Others will index a bit from the top, middle, and bottom parts of your website, and search them for keywords. Generally keyword density should be in the 2-3% range

Other Meta Tags

You can also instruct the search engine robot/spider how to index your site using the robots META Tag. This is what it looks like:

<META name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">
What the tag above does is tell the spider not to index the page that it appears on, and not to follow the links on that page. Here's a complete list of attributes for the robot's tag:

index - the default, the page is added to the search engine database

noindex - the page is not added to the search engine database

nofollow - the spider doesn't follow the links on that page

none - same as "noindex, no follow"

To use any of these attributes simply replace the "noindex, nofollow" text in the example above with whatever you want to use. If you need to use more than one attribute, separate them with a comma.

Client Redirect Meta Tag

Have you ever seen a page that automatically refreshes to another URL after a few seconds? Did you ever wondered how it was done? I'll tell you. The page made use of one of the http-equiv META Tags to automatically "pull" you to a different page after a few seconds. Here's what the code looks like:

<META http-equiv="refresh" content="1; url=newpage.htm">

The value of content denotes how many seconds will pass before the new page is called for. If you want it to happen as soon as a person hits that page, then set the value to "0".

Other Meta Tags Resources

WebsiteGarage

"http://www.websitegarage.com"

ABS Meta Tags Analyzer

"http://www.scrubtheweb.com/abs/meta-check.html"

A Great Meta Tags Tool
Checks
1. General Html
2.Html Title Tag Analysis
3.Meta Tag Analysis

Meta Medic

"http://www.northernwebs.com/set/setsimjr.html"

Description from the site "How many times have you submitted a site to the search engines, only to learn, weeks later, that you have messed up with a tag somewhere? Search Engine friendly web design isn't rocket science, but you need to pay attention to detail.
And now that has just become easier

Good Keywords

"http://www.goodkeywords.com/gkw.htm"

It Is A Freeware program that helps you target most popular keywords

Keyword Counter

"http://www.keywordcount.com"

A Very Good Website Get A quick count of the number of times your keyword appear on your pages. You can also compare your keyword density with that of your competitors.

Does live searches on major search engines and so you can see the Top 5,000 keywords and phrases used by people.