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By Amy R. Derr
Search engine Algorithms change faster than most people can keep up. As recently as three years ago, the easy way to get your website listed high on the search engines was to simply use a few effective meta tags. That isn’t the case anymore. Meta tags don’t offer the same function that they used to. Search engines do not generally look to them for ranking. That being said, meta tags are still important for a number of functions. Here’s why and how to use them effectively.
First it is important to understand exactly what a meta tag is. Meta tags are the information tags in the <head> section of your HTML code. They’re right at the top because they contain the description information about your webpage. I pulled mine right off of my own website so you could see a realistic example.
<head>
<title>Amy Derr, Professional Website Designer, Graphics</title>
<meta name="description" content="A web site design company offering new sites, redesigns, custom graphics, web site hosting, digital photography and consulting at affordable prices.">
<meta name="keywords" content="custom website design, webdesign, web site hosting, host, web, site, internet marketing, small business, e-commerce, affordable, page design, website development, amy derr, web designer, search engines, marketing, graphic design, las vegas, north las vegas, nevada, NV website designers, corporate internet branding, advertising">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<link href="main.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
</head>
Above you’ll see three types of meta tags. You’ll see the title tag, the description and the keywords. Each one of these tags has a different role to play within search engine optimization.
Title Tag
The title tag is important because search engines use this information as your link in the search engines. For example, my title tag says <title>Amy Derr, Professional Website Designer, Graphics</title> When you look up my website in the search engine the exact same information is listed – “Amy Derr, Professional Website Designer, Graphics”
This makes writing your title tag very important. You want it to be short, 5-7 words, and contain at least one of your major keywords. Your title tag is what your potential visitors will see so you want to make sure it is compelling.
Description Tag
This information isn’t generally used for any kind of search engine ranking, however it is often used as the text blurb that people see on their search engine results. Here you have about 25 words to describe your site and to compel people to visit it. Take a moment and search for something, anything - yoga, cats, home office organization, baseball anything.
Take a look at the top result, the first one on your list and read the description. Now click on the link and visit the site. Head on up to your browser’s toolbar and look for the ‘view’ button. Click on it and you’ll see an option to view source. This gives you the opportunity to see the HTML code of the website. Take a look at the description tag near the top of the page. It should say the exact same thing you saw on your search engine results to describe the site. See the importance of this tag? You can use it to help pull visitors to your site.
Keywords Tag
This is the tag most people think of when they think of meta tags. Truth? These tags aren’t really used by search engines any more. The keywords tags are very useful for RSS feeds so it is still important to include them and they’re incredibly helpful for misspellings, local search engine information, and AdSense ads because Google will look here to find appropriate ads to place on your site, however for simple search engine ranking, these keyword tags matter very little.
That being said, it takes you about 30 seconds to place a few keywords here and it doesn’t hurt your rankings. If your keywords are also included in your description and/or title tag search engines will notice this and it may bump you up a few spaces. It is definitely worth your time to use this tag.
To make a long story short, while meta tags don’t play the same important role that they used to in search engine optimization, they still play an important role in driving traffic to your website.
About the Author:
Amy Derr seeks to help business owners and organizations market themselves effectively online. She is a Professional Web Designer who owns and operates Insiteful Web Design (http://www.insitefulwebdesign.com), a full-service web design firm.
This article may be reprinted as long as the "About the Author" blurb stays in place.
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