Metatags

One of the simplest methods of preparing your site for submission to search engines is by inserting certain lines of code (meta tags) within a web page which are seen by Search Engines - but not by the user.

You should make sure that each page of your site has different meta tags! It should be noted however, that certain search engines do not use all these tags, especially Google, but they all use the title tag which is your most important page feature.

Where this information is used these are called Meta Tags. As an example have a look at how the Meta Tags of this page are made up, with an explanation of what each one does. You can see the source code for this page by clicking the right button on your mouse and choosing 'view source'.

Go Higher with Meta Tags!

Correct use of meta tags within every web page on your site can help you get higher search engine listings. MakeMeTop explains how.

1. The first highlighted area 'Using Meta Tags....' is produced by a tag called the TITLE tag (not strictly a meta tag but used in the header of your HTML - like meta tags). These titles will appear on search engines as the title of your page, and can also be see in the blue area at the very top of your browser. This is THE most important tag on your page. Every search engine uses this information to find out what your page is about and if it is not used you have wasted an opportunity to be found. When creating a title tag use between 7 and 11 words only. More words dilute your message and reduce the impact on search engine rankings. Use your primary key word once only.

How to use the < TITLE > tag:

Using Meta Tags Help Get Higher Search Engine Listings
This will inform a search engine that this page should be found if any of the words in the title are typed in to their search facility.

How NOT to use the < TITLE > tag: < TITLE >Home Page - Welcome< /TITLE >

This tells a search engine (and a searcher) nothing at all about your page.

2. The second area 'Use of meta tags within...' comes from a tag called the meta description. Most search engines use this to allow you to give some information about why a visitor should visit this page. However some engines do not use this tag and will pick up information about your page from the page itself. If you have no text on a page, there will be no description. Descriptions should be between 14 to 20 words long and should repeat your main key words that were in your title once only.

How to use a Description Tag:

<meta name="description" content="Correct use of meta tags within every web page on your site can help you get higher search engine listings. MakeMeTop explains how.">

3. The Meta Keyword Tag. Some search engines (though many have ceased to use this method) use a tag called a meta keyword tag. Be very careful using this tag as you can be penalized heavily for using this incorrectly. If in doubt leave it out!

The keyword tag is designed to assist a search engine in finding the main words your page should be listed under. This has led to misuse with web masters inserting words like 'mp3' or 'sex' just to try and attract visitors. Other sites have inserted competitor names and have been sued (and have lost) for this. If a search engine finds you have used a word which is not repeated on your site in visible text, your whole site might be viewed as 'Spam' and dropped from the index!

How to use a Keyword Tag:

<meta name="keywords" content="meta titles descriptions tags higher search engine listings">

How not to use a Keyword Tag:

<meta name="keywords" content="sex,mp3,britney,napster,meta,meta,meta,sex,a load of words that you think people are typing in to the internet to find your competitors">

So the complete META TAG section of this page reads:

< TITLE >Using Meta Tags Help Get Higher Search Engine Listings

meta name =" description " content ="Correct use of meta tags within every web page on your site can help you get higher search engine listings. MakeMeTop explains how. ">

meta name="keywords" content="meta titles descriptions tags higher search engine listings">

Other Code..Remember!

Any other code (apart from the Robots TAG which is used if you DO NOT want a search engine to index your page) will be ignored by search engines or, if these are used as attempts to fool the engine in to indexing more key words, may result in down ranking the pages or dropping them from the index.

Assistance in generating meta tags and validating your code for search engines can be found in our Resources Section.