Meta
Tags are important pieces of code that most search engines use
to analyse, categorize and rank your website.
Proper
use of Meta Tags can substantially increase your search engine
traffic. Here is a basic set of Meta Tags:
<TITLE>Webmaster
Tools at Bravenet.com!</TITLE>
<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="Free tools
to help you get hits.">
<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="traffic, hits,
websites">
<META NAME="RATING" CONTENT="General">
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="index, follow">
<META NAME="REVISIT-AFTER" CONTENT="4 weeks">
Note:
Include these tags in the <HEAD> area of your HTML page!
Title
Tag
While
not strictly a Meta Tag, the TITLE Tag is an important piece of
information for search engines. Many search engines lay extreme
weight on a site's Title to index that site. Your Title should
normally about 10 words in length but may contain up to 100 characters.
Try to stick to the focus of your site when choosing a title.
Here's
an example for a hotel:
<TITLE>Acme
Hotel, Victoria, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, hotels,
accommodations, inns.</TITLE>
Description Meta Tag
The
DESCRIPTION Meta Tag is a one or two sentence description used
by many search engines as a displayed description for your site.
Not all search engines use this Meta Tag, but if you don't include
it, those that do may display odd results or simply ignore your
site.
Your
description should be short and to the point, no more than 25
words. Be sure to use as many of your keywords as possible here!
For example: "Acme Hotel in downtown Victoria, BC Canada.
Full accommodations, tourist attractions and reasonable rates
in waterfront location."
Keywords Meta Tag
The
KEYWORDS Meta Tag are words that people use to find your products
or services on the Internet through search engines. Our hotel
example might be found by typing in "Vancouver Island hotels"
in a search engine.
It
is very important to select the right keywords for your site.
Choose words directly related to your site and list them in order
of importance. Take care over this selection. Write your ideas
down and then list them in order of importance. Theories vary
on the number of keywords to include in this tag. Limit yourself
to those you are sure are directly connected to your site.
If
you are not sure which keywords to use, check out which ones are
being used by those sites in your general category of business
which appear first in major search engines. This is a very good
idea to do for all of the search engine tips and tricks.
For our hotel, the Keywords Meta Tag might include: Vancouver
Island, Victoria, Acme Hotel, hotels, accommodations, lodgings,
British Columbia, tourism, waterfront, downtown, budget rates,
etc.
Note
that it is a good idea to use plurals when possible.
Robots
Robots
are electronic "spiders" that roam the Internet looking
for pages to index to search engines. If you allow Robots to "Index"
your page, that means you allow them to log your pages for inclusion
in search engine listings. If you allow Robots to "Follow"
that means you are letting them spider other pages on your site
to index those as well. You may want to exclude Robots, for example,
on administrative pages that you don't want people to find.
Source: Webmasters tricks ans tips / Bravenet.com
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