Meta Tags

Meta Tags
by Illya J. D'Addezio
http://www.webmasteroutpost.com/articles/meta_tag_madness.html

I've always been fascinated with the origins of words, but it wasn't until the Internet came into creation that I start to wonder why man, who was intelligent enough to create thousands of words, was so lazy that he had to give many of them multiple definitions. My point being that search engines don't have a chance providing relevant search results just based on your content. That's where META tags come in handy -- a webmaster's little friends. META tags can be used to identify the creator of the page, the keywords and description of the page, among many other things.

Meta tags give the webmaster a chance to clarify exactly what their pages are about, and ensure that search engines display their pages in a presentable fashion to people searching. We're referring to the two most frequently used meta tags: DESCRIPTION and KEYWORDS. Some skeptics believe that sites having these tags will someday be penalized, but even the search engines deny that possibility. At a minimum every page on your site should have an optimized title and META DESCRIPTION. There are some search engines that ignore the META KEYWORDS tag, so it's function is somewhat questionable.

STOP! READ THIS NEXT SENTENCE CAREFULLY (IN FACT, READ IT OUT LOUD).
DO NOT CUT/PASTE THE SAME META DESCRIPTION TAG ON ALL OF YOUR PAGES.

Nothing is worse than seeing the same meta description on page after page. Okay, having the same title on every page is clearly worse, but we're talking about meta tags here. When you look at all of the effort (and probably a little cash) you put into making your web site a success, meta description tags provide the best return on investment. You go through all this effort to learn about building a better web site so you can get better search engine placement, and when you succeed why doesn't your site traffic increase? Hmmm... maybe because your title and meta description (if you included one) are so boring noone clicks on your listing.

People hire search engine optimizers thinking they're these techno-geniuses. They're just put together well-crafted appealling titles and meta tags because your paying them to. It's not that difficult, especially if you're just getting started with your site and develop a good tagging discipline. If you already have a site with numerous pages, target the ones most likely to attract visitors and clean them up pronto!

See, that's it. Voila! You now know one of the secrets to web marketing success. Want another?

Ha! See how easy? Hold on, please don't take me literally with this last example. Don't repeat the same keyword over and over again. Most experts recommend having between 2 and 5 copies of your most popular keywords. I like to stop at 3 copies, and I usually have them in different cases (e.g. keyword,KEYWORD,Keyword). Some search engines are case-sensitive. And I always includes some typos (e.g. keyword,keywood,keeword). People don't always pay attention when typing in their search query. And then it's good to put in some variations and synonyms (e.g. keyword,key word,tags,meta tag).

I'm a META tag minimilist, so I don't think it's necessary to list out all the available tags. There's only one other tag I used regularly. Before I get to that, however, let me explain my last point a little. I do agree it is important to properly identify the author of a page and some of the other meta tag options that exist, but in the real world I find I have little time to make sure I include them. Since they have no effect on search engine results (other than description, keywords and robots), I give them a much lower priority. You get more mileage in the long run if you concentrate on developing keyword rich content.

Okay, there's one other tag I use regularly, because it can control which pages appear in a search engine. You may be familiar with a file called ROBOTS.TXT that every search engine spider checks before reading a page on your site. I like to use ROBOTS.TXT for controlling spider access at the folder level, and then the META ROBOTS tag to control access to pages within a folder. Why in the world would I not want a page spidered? Everytime I create a page for a site, I ask myself, "would I like this to be the first page people see on my site?" If I answer no, then I adjust the META ROBOTS tag to tell the spider NOT to INDEX it. Then I ask myself, "do I need the spider to continue on to any of the links on this page?" If not, then I adjust the tag to tell the spider NOT to FOLLOW them.

Here (above) we see two examples highlighting the options for the content parameter of the tag. You can mix/match them, just don't include both INDEX and NOINDEX on the same page. ARCHIVE is an interesting one. The only practical use I've found is that the Google spider will check it to determine whether or not to include a copy of your page that can be accessed via the CACHED link in your listing. I don't like people to see old versions of my page, and I really don't like people visiting a page from my site and not having a record of it in my server log file.

There is one other META tag I use regularly, but it does not have any impact on search engines. It's the redirect instruction for when you want the users' browser to load a different page. It's usefull when you retire or move a page on your site. The user types in http://www.yoursite.com/page1.html and you want to send them to page2.html instead (and automatically).

This is what you would put on page1.html, and the 0; is the number of seconds the browser waits. For the most part you don't want it to wait. If you wanted to show a message first for ten seconds and them have the browser switch, you could do so. When I'm surfing I find that annoying -- just take me there.

That's it... well these are the tags that will have the most affect on how your pages appear in search engines. You can do some other neat stuff, like set a cookie, or pre-name a window for more exact JavaScript behavior, or prevent the browser from caching the page. The links below can help with those meta tags.

Illya D'Addezio has operated the Webmaster Outpost since 1999 and his marketing strategy has helped countless webmasters develop successful web businesses. © 2002 Software Wonders of NJ. Permission to reprint this article is freely granted provided that this author bio paragraph and copyright is included without modification.