~~~~A Brief Note about Meta
Tags and Meta Keywords~~~~~~
Meta Tags are thought to be the be all-end all of search engine rankings. This is not true. Meta Tags are a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for high rankings. Meta tags are designed to provide basic information to the search engine about the site.
Meta tags appear at the top of the HTML document within the
<head></head> section of the document. In the following example,
nine different types of Meta Tags are identified: Content-Type, Copyright,
Resource-type, ObjectType, Author, Rating, Distribution, Description, and
Keywords.
The two meta tags of primary interest to search engines are the “Description”
and “Keywords” tags. These tags describe the contents and key words for the
search engine.
<HTML>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=iso-8859-1">
<meta http-equiv="Copyright" content="1998, 1999
MotorCities.com, Inc.">
<meta name="Resource-type" content="Document">
<meta name="ObjectType" content="Journal">
<meta name="Author" content="Car Pictures .com
Webmaster">
<meta name="Rating" content="General">
<meta name="Distribution" content="Global">
<meta name="Description" content="Gallery of car pictures,
car videos, car sounds, car photos, car photographs, automobile pictures,
automobile videos, automobile sounds, automobile photos, automobile
photographs, auto pictures, auto videos, auto sounds, auto photos, auto
photographs, pictures of cars.">
<meta name="Keywords" content="Gallery of car pictures, car
videos, car sounds, car photos, car photographs, automobile pictures,
automobile videos, automobile sounds, automobile photos, automobile
photographs, auto pictures, auto videos, auto sounds, auto photos, auto
photographs, pictures of cars, Porsche pictures, Ferrari pictures, Lamborghini
pictures.">
<title>
Car Pictures .com -- Gallery of pictures (photos or photographs), video,
sounds, wallpaper and specifications of all cars, motorcycles and all vehicles.
</title>
</HEAD>
Several excellent sources that detail the use of
the Meta Tag are:
The Web Developer’s Virtual Library (http://wdvl.com/Authoring/HTML/Head/Meta/
)
Search Engine Watch (http://searchenginewatch.internet.com/webmasters/meta.html)
Internet Marketing Chapter 13: Driving
Traffic to Your Site: Understanding and Using Search Engines for Search and
Site Optimization.
Maximum -800 characters.
Adding keywords simply requires editing the HTML code and adding the meta tags,
as in the following example. The top of a web page source code on your site
might look like:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>ACME Corporation Devices Information</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<H1>ACME Corporation Innovative Opening Devices Information</H1>
Create a META tag with the following information:
<META name="keywords" content="brochure">
TO ADD ADDITIONAL KEYWORDS
<META name="keywords" content="brochure, widget,
wholesale">
The top of your HTML document would then look like:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>ACME Corporation Devices Information</TITLE>
<META name="keywords" content="brochure, widget,
wholesale">
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<H1>ACME Corporation Innovative Devices Information</H1>
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ABOUT META KEYWORDS
Q) META keywords tag - should I use UPPERCASE, lowercase or a mixture,
commas or spaces?
A) Use lowercase, separated by commas, with a space after the comma.
Q) If I have several keyword phrases in my META keywords tag that all
contain the same keyword, will I get penalized? For example:
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="gold jewelry, diamond jewelry,
silver jewelry, platinum jewelry"> This would represent four
repetitions of the word 'jewelry'.
A) I personally do not believe in spamming or putting multiple keywords
throughout the page. This is too easy to check for and the search engines are
not stupid. If we can think of it they already have. Most engines only count to 2 for keywords, so why waste the
keyword utilization. Put in other keywords.
Q) Will I be penalized for using the same keywords on a lot of different pages
that have the same content?
A) If the pages have exactly the same content, why are they in your site? If
they are all related to the same subject, they can logically have the same
keywords, but the description tag would be different.
Q) What is the optimum number of keywords before the engine gets bored?
A) It varies. Some are more easily bored than others. I don't usually
repeat keywords, maybe twice for the important ones. It's better to show up
adequately on all the engines than perfectly on one and badly on the rest.
Q) Will the engines treat a phrase such as handmade gifts that is written
as a keyword phrase the same as if it were written as two different words?
Should I write them out both ways?
A) Use: "hand made handmade gift gifts" to cover all the
possible variations searchers might enter.