Search Engine Help
Meta tags have never been a guaranteed way to gain a top ranking
on crawler-based search engines. They also offer the ability
to prevent pages from being indexed at all. This page explores
these and other meta tag-related features in more depth. Today,
the most valuable feature they offer the web site owner is the
ability to control to some degree how their web pages are described
by some search engines. What are meta tags? They are information
inserted into the "head" area of your web pages. Other
than the title tag (explained below), information in the head
area of your web pages is not seen by those viewing your pages
in browsers. Instead, meta information in this area is used
to communicate information that a human visitor may not be concerned
with.
Meta tags, for example, can tell a browser what "character
set" to use or whether a web page has self-rated itself
in terms of adult content. The title tag is also used as the
words to describe your page when someone adds it to their "Favorites"
or "Bookmarks" lists. For instance, if you added
this page to your Favorites in Internet Explorer, it would show
up like this: Let's see two common types of meta tags, then
we'll discuss exactly how they are used in more depth: If you
look at the reverse bar in your browser, then you should see
that text being used, similar to this some browsers also supplement
whatever you put in the title tag by adding their own name,
as you can see Microsoft's Internet Explorer doing in the picture
above. How did that little Search Engine Watch logo also show
up? Everyone always asks. The article below provides more help.
But what about search engines! The title tag is crucial for
them. The text you use in the title tag is one of the most important
factors in how a search engine may decide to rank your web page
In addition, all major crawlers will use the text of your title
tag as the text they use for the title of your page in your
listings. The meta keyword tag is also sometimes useful as a
way to help your page come up for synonyms or unusual words
that don't appear on the page itself. For instance, let's say
you had a page all about the "Penny Black" stamp.
You never actually say the word "collecting" on
this page. By having the word in your meta keywords tag, then
you may help increase the odds of coming up if someone searched
for "penny black stamp collecting." Of course you
would greater increase the odds if you just used the word "collecting"
in the body copy of the page itself. Here's another example.
Let's say you have a page about horseback riding, and you've
written your page using "horseback" as a single word.
You realize that some people may instead search for "horse
back riding," with "horse back" in their searches
being two separate words.
If you listed these words separately in your meta keywords
tag, THEN MAYBE FOR THE FEW CRAWLERS THAT SUPPORT IT, your page
might rank better for "horse back" riding. Sadly,
the best way to ensure this would be to write your pages using
both "horseback riding" and "horse back riding"
in the text -- or perhaps on some of your pages, use the single
word version and on others, the two word version.
I'm using all these capital letters on purpose. Far too many
people new to search engine optimization obsess with the meta
keywords tag. FEW crawlers support it. For those that do, it
MIGHT! MAYBE! PERHAPS! POSSIBLY! BUT WITH NO GUARANTEE! help
improve the ranking of your page. It also may very well do nothing
for your page at all. In fact, repeat a particular word too
often in a meta keywords tag and you could actually harm your
page's chances of ranking well. Because of this, I strongly
suggest that those new to search engine optimization not even
worry about the tag at all.
Even those who are experienced in search engine optimization
may decide it is no longer worth using the tags. Google Search
Engine doesn't. Any meta keywords tags you find in the site
were written in the past, when the keywords tag was more important.
There's no harm in leaving up existing tags you may have written,
but going forward, writing new tags probably isn't worth the
trouble.
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