Meta Tag Q & A: Q - "What are Meta Tags?" A - Meta tags are a part of your web pages that are read by many search engines, though you cannot see them directly on your pages. Having proper meta tags on your web pages optimized for search engines should be one of the top priorities of your website designer, but often they are only an after-thought, if they are done at all. A very large percentage (75% to 80%) of the small business sites we analyze have no meta tags or improper meta tags.
Q - "How can I see my Meta tags?" A - That's actually very easy. It just takes a little patience. Here is how to do it: - If you are using Internet Explorer, (Netscape is very similar), go to "view"
- Close to the bottom of "view" you'll see a selection called "source", click on that
- The coded content of the web page will pop up in Window's Notepad, or the equivalent if you are not using Windows
- Ok, yes, it looks like gobble-de-gook... but go down the page or use "search" and find lines that start with "Meta...."
- The two lines you must have on the page to be search engine ready are:
- "Meta name= Description...." and
- "Meta name=Keywords...."
Q - What should my meta tags look like? A - The complete descriptive meta tag might look like this, (similar to our home page): <meta name="Description" content="websiterevamp.org - We design, redesign and revamp websites for usability, efficient navigation, search engine optimization, browser compatibility, fast downloading and optimized graphics">
Look at the words after "content". Do they accurately describe the contents of the page? A - The keywords meta tag could look like this: <meta name="Keywords" content=" Website Revamp, website redesign, website design, search engine optimize, downloading optimized graphics browser compatibility, website redesign, website design, website graphics WebSite Revamp, small business website, websiterevamp.org small business websites, association website, website navigation, site assessment site evaluation, search engine ranking, internet marketing">
Note that the keywords are actually phrases, not single words. For the most part, single words are useless unless very unique. Keyword phrases are separated by commas.
Few search engines use the keyword tags anymore, but one of the three most important search engines, Inkotomi, is reputed to still use them. Inkotomi is owned by Yahoo and powers Yahoo searchs.
Q - "Can the same meta tags be used on all my pages?" A - Not a good idea! Each page needs it's own set of unique meta tags. If you discover that every page has the same meta tags, you've got a problem. Search engines don't take kindly to that kind of thing - they might look at it as a type of "spamming" attempt. This condition usually results when a designer designs one typical page including "all purpose" meta tags and then copies that basic page as a model for all succeeding pages. Quite frankly, many site designers simply don't know any better. Some designers do know better but, after all, meta tags are not something, you the client, are going to look at before signing the check! Writing good html titles and meta tags is hard work, takes time, experience and research. Good html titles and meta tags rely heavily on having the right content on the page in the first place! You can't just pull words out of a hat and expect them to work. While you might be able to get a high page rank on a particular search phrase, it does you little good if no one ever searches on that phrase. Q - What does my html title tag look like?A - Look at the very top left side of your browser window, above the "File Edit View...etc." part of the browser window and it will say something like: Website Re-design Group - Meta Tag Q and A
That is the html title for this page. Q - "Can I use the same html title on all my pages?" A - Duplicate titles: Once again, the answer is "NO." Using the same title on every page might not get you banned from search engines, but it might prevent pages beyond the home page from being listed at all. Search engines consider the html title to be THE MOST IMPORTANT item on your web page. If they are all identical, you are wasting a valuable opportunity. Strictly speaking, html titles are not meta tags. However, there are similar concerns about them. The html title is the sentence you see at the very top of your browser window. They look like: <title>Your page title is blah, blah, blah </title> when you "view source." The html page title is often the first thing one sees in search engine results and it's what gets listed when a page is saved to "favorites." Writing good page titles is part art, part science and beyond the scope of this article. If your website hasn't got the right stuff under the hood, you don't stand a chance of winning the race!
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