Meta tags are used by some search engines to categorize your site. The two most used meta tags are description, the description of your web page and keywords a listing of words that are relevant to your web page that people would search for. Let's take a quick look at these two tags.

Meta tags are part of the <head> tag. I generally put them below the <title> and above </head>.

Meta Keyword

The keywords are the words that you think someone will search for when they are trying to find a site with content like yours. The keyword tag can contain single words and also phrases as we have demonstrated above. Separate each keyword or phrase with a comma. Most search engines will support around 1,000 characters in the Meta Keyword Tag.

I know of no evidence that suggests the space between the comma and the next keyword has to be there. If you have a lot of keywords you may find it beneficial to eliminate the spaces. There are several important engines that don't use the full 1,000 characters mentioned above. Make sure to place your most important keywords at the beginning of the string.

The selection of your keywords is really, really important. For now you are trying to learn HTML, so don't go nuts with this. After your site is set up you'll need to spend a considerable amount of time coming up with these keywords and phrases. For your next site, and those you may do for other people, you'll need to address this issue in a professional manner.

Something else to consider about the keywords. As stated 1,000 characters is the maximum most engines will use. That's actually quite a lot of information, and represents quite a few keywords. Since search engine optimization is becoming such a critical element in your web design, I believe we are at a point in time where we need more than one introduction, or index.shtml page. It seems easier to write nice keyword rich content for several keywords and phrases on one page, than it is to write the same web page optimizing for 100 keywords. Consequently, depending on how many keywords you actually feel are important to address, it may be wise to set up more than one site, or several entrance pages to have your visitors arrive at. Many sites use multiple files such as index1.shtml, index2.shtml or better even yet is putting the keyword in the filename like htmltutor.shtml ... now that is really descriptive isn't it.

Don't place keywords that are not relevant to your sites content into your keywords tag just to drive traffic to your site. You will be penalized for it! Search engines are becoming very picky about how and what they list.

Repetition of keywords has also become a no-no. Some webmasters used to simply repeat their most important keywords over and over. The idea was the more often they appeared, the better listing they'd receive in search results. That situation didn't last long. Search engines adapt quickly.

Most engines will now penalize your position for repetition of keywords in the Meta Keyword Tag as well as within your HTML document. This is very confusing, not exactly fair, and very difficult to deal with. Their reasons for doing so are valid, but it is my belief they realize the problem this all creates and will eventually program a work-around for their engine and find a way to distinguish between the sites that are legitimate and the ones who are trying to get away with something.

Bear in mind that it is next to impossible to write content about a subject matter and not mention that subject over and over. The answer lies in percentages. If the percentage of your keyword in relation to the entire document is too high, you'll get penalized. Too low a percentage and you won't get listed. So if every other word was your keyword then you'd have a 50% keyword density. If it appeared once and your site had 100 words your keyword density would be 1%.

Get that algorithm just right and you'll find yourself at the top of the search results. Of course, each search engine ranks sites on different criteria. Also of importance is where the keywords appear on a page, near the top holds more importance. Keywords in headings (<h1>) seem to be a good idea. Keywords in links is definitely a good idea. Keyword used in alt tags is a good idea too. Some say that using keywords in comment tags is good too. It's a nightmare isn't it!

What has happened over the years is that some web sites found out that certain keywords were searched on more often than others. As a for instance, one of the original computer games was Pong. Today Gamecube and Gameboy are very popular so it's pretty obvious that gameboy is going to get more searches than pong will. So, in yesteryear if you had a site about Pong and you wanted more traffic you could use gameboy in your keywords and your site would show up to everyone searching for gameboy. Fine. You had more traffic. Problem is that the people didn't want your site, and the search engine was serving up irrelevant results. Let's face it, when you do a search for a recipe to make a spice cake you really don't want to come up with sites about the porn movies that are on the spice channel. That is the dilemma search engines have. When you search for a store to buy a new umbrella, do you want to arrive at a site selling umbrella palm trees?

So keep your keywords relevant to the subject matter of your web site. Don't use keywords that are about something else, or may be misleading, or not exactly what you are about. You'll fare much better by simply being honest and straightforward than you will by trying to trick the search engines. These trick tactics are considered SPAM by the engines. they will penalize you.

There are many sites dealing with marketing your web site and getting your site to the top of the search engine listings. It's better you go to these sites after you've learned HTML and then learn how to market your site. Try these sites: WebPromote, Bruce Clay. I will deal with marketing in part two of this tutorial. Check our site for our future updates.

OK, having just mentioned those sites, I don't want to actually recommend them. I have been to the sites and found them to be of value. That doesn't mean they are of value today, when you click through to them. I've seen many sites that seemed to be valuable, and then only turn to rubbish next time I visited. One in particular, I thought was a great place, I found out later to be selling my email address to just about anyone who would buy, and I began receiving SPAM email at the address I used with them. You should always do a search at your favorite search engine for the topic you want to learn about. Get a fresh search for fresh information. Don't rely solely on what you have found in the past, nor rely solely on those old stand by sites that have served you well in the past. Get new fresh information.

By the way, since I mentioned it, here is an email trick that I always use. My web hosting package allows for unlimited email addresses. This simply means that anything at all sent to my domain name, will get to me. It doesn't have to be addressed to sales@, or robert@ or support@, it can be anything at all, and it will come into the inbox for my domain. I use this when visiting a web site where they want my email address.

So if I am at widgets.com and they ask for my email (and for whatever reason I decide to give it to them) I use the address of widgetsdotcom@mydomain.com or just widgets@mydomain.com. Now when they email me it has a To: field of widgets@mydomain.com. I can easily filter this into a mail box specifically for them, which is nice, but even more importantly anything coming to that address that isn't actually from their site, identifies it immediately as SPAM. It also identified widgets.com as someone who has violated my privacy by selling my email address to a third party (of course they may have stated within their Privacy Policy that they intended to do just that!).

Anyway, as mentioned in the preceding paragraph, that site that I thought was so good turned out to be zilla bad! I am to this day receiving email from all kinds of crap web sites and porno sites all addressed to that one specific email address I signed up with ... thatzillabadsite@mydomain.com. Of course, I have it all deleted by filters in my email software so I don't even see it. Anyway ... back to the topic at hand ... HTML.

Download a copy of Good Keywords install it and run it. It allows you to type in your keyword, or keyphrase, and it returns lots of relevant results from several different search engines. The results are actual searches done last month with your keyword or keyphrase in them. This is a great way to get ideas about your keywords, and more importantly, how people are searching for them. You may come up with something you never thought of. I know I usually do.

Now as you use Good Keywords notice the results returned. Let's say we sell hand held, rainy day, umbrellas. When I typed in umbrellas I was presented with (at the time of this writing) a large list including patio umbrellas and umbrella trees. If I took this entire list and placed it into my keywords I would be doing a injustice to those who found my site looking for umbrella trees or patio umbrellas. Get it? Don't let yourself get out of control with keywords. Keep them relevant, a few targeted keywords or keyphrases per page, and you should see some very nice results.

Search Engines have become big business, and the competition between them is fierce. You will do well by playing the game by their rules. They want to supply their users with good results to their searches. If you can help them by setting your site up with the proper meta tags and keyword rich content, they'll do well by you.

Meta Description

A simple description of this web site would be what you see above between the quotes on the CONTENT= part of the Meta Description Tag.

You really should use the meta tags. Search engines like them. Many use them as the information for your site and that is what will show up in their listings. They are important and you should spend some time in creating them. Gather all your best keywords and put them here. Some engines call themselves Meta Search Engines which only means that they use the meta information to categorize your site. Without those tags these engines will probably not index you at all.

The meta tags are used by search engines to categorize your site. Best way to go with these is to create a file with nothing else in it but these, and then copy/paste them into each web page you create. Most of them will remain the same from one page to another. The keywords and description will change with each page.

Here is a list of the basic meta tags. Note that you do not need them at all. Your page will be fine without them. But many search engines use the keywords and description meta tags in their results to categorize your site and the actual description to display in their results. If nothing else, use these two only. You can use the rest if you want, or not if you don't. I generally use them all.

There is a site that I like to use that will create your meta tags for you! Just input your information into a form and voila! ... instant meta tags. Check it out VeryGoodSubmissionService.com Free Meta Tag Generator. They are a pretty good submission service submitting only to search engines and not to the gazillion Free For All sites out there. I use their service regularly and like the results I get.

Here is a complete web page "top" and how it looks with the meta tags included:

Here is another tag I like to include on all my pages.

The reason for this gets very, very complicated. It boils down to MicroSoft thinking it was a good idea to make their browser (Windows versions) able to overlay web sites and provide links, on keywords and topics, to other web sites for a price. They call this Smart Tags. Simply put, if you have a site selling widgets, every time widget is mentioned on your web site it can be linked to your competitions web site, consequently driving at least some of your traffic off to your competition. Your competition would purchase this service from MicroSoft. They would purchase the word widget from MicroSoft. Lousy, business practice, to say the least. (Don't you just hate Bill Gates?) Well, that one line of code above, placed between <head> and </head> tags is supposed to prevent the overlaying of links on your site with links to your competition's site.

Here is an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal on Smart Tags.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer Smart Tags are something new and dangerous. They mean that the company that controls the Web browser is using that power to actually alter others' Web sites to its own advantage. Microsoft has a perfect right to sell services. But by using its dominant software to do so, it will be tilting the playing field and threatening editorial integrity.

< Previous: Some Design Ideas — Next: Web Hosts >

Daily SEO Tips eMail
SEO Blog
SEO Training
SEO Basics 101 eBook
Learn All the Basics to SEO

8153 / 051006 / 304083