Fine Tune Your website with META Tags

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Fine Tune Your Website With META Tags

META tags are used to provide a description of your page content, note keywords for search engines that use them (most do not), provide copyright information, and other information about your page. META tag information does not appear on the browser screen.

META tags are, without a doubt, the most misunderstood and misused section of HTML code. Most of the newer books concerning HTML ignore these tags altogether.

How you use them, if you use them, can affect your professional image in ways you never imagined!

META tags belong between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags.
Putting them anywhere else creates a blank space on the page, equal to the amount of text they contain.

META tags can be nested:

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META NAME="description" content= "  ">
<META NAME="keywords" content="   ">
"META NAME="copyright" content="  ">
"LINK REV=MADE href="mailto:  ">
</HEAD>

Every page should contain at tleast the following META tags:
(description, keywords, copyright, mailto) in the HTML code.

Description
<META NAME="description" content=" ">

The space between the quotation marks following the word content is where you put a brief summary of what your site or page is about. This is not the place to duplicate what is on your home page, or a place to put your mission statement.

The Description tag is limited to 200 characters, including spaces.
Search engines will display a maximum of 200 characters (approximately 25 words) of information.

The description tag is not used to record keywords. The keyword or keys tag is used instead.
Copyright
Used in addition to the visible copyright notice on each of your pages.
<META NAME="copyright" content="Copyright 2001 your company name">
MADE
Provides an e-mail contact in case the page doesn't load correctly.
<LINK REV=MADE href="mailto:webmaster@whatever.com">
Keywords
Words used by people to search for content.

You can have up to 1000 characters (approximately 150 words) of information (separated by a comma) - although some search engines accept only 300-500 characters.

What You Need to Know about Keywords
Some of these points are obvious, yet I'm constantly surprised by the number of sites that misuse them. So maybe they aren't quite so obvious after all.
- Keywords can be seen when viewing the source code
  Never put anything, or let anyone else put anything, in the keyword section that would embarrass you or your potential clients.
- The keywords you choose reflect your level of professionalism the same way your speech does
  The majority residential real estate sales are decided by women. So why do so many designers of these sites insist on putting references to sex in their keywords?
  
  Someone who is surfing the WEB looking for a good time is going to be very disappointed when they find the hottest thing on your site is a 4-bedroom house with a pool.
  
  Likewise, someone seeking a professional organization might be turned off by the sleaze references. Besides, what does it say about you, your company, your ethics?
- Some search engines ignore keywords altogether!
  Not all search engines use keyword references to catalogue sites. Most use the text from the WEB page itself, or the page title.
  
  Some search engines that support the meta description and keywords tag will also give pages an extra boost if search terms appear in these areas. Not all search engines that support the tags also give a ranking boost.
  
  Most search engines will hit you with a penalty for repeating keywords or phrases on the WEB page! So repeating the words real estate, or other phrase, 100⁺ times in the keyword section or somewhere else on the page, is not only pointless, it can produce the opposite result you /or your designer intended.
  
  Calafia Consulting has an excellent page detailing the different search engines and how the work. Go visit their site at http://www.calafia.com/webmasters/chart.htm.
Exercise some common sense when using keywords.
Getting raw hits is not the goal of the game - attracting the serious buyer is.

For more information on how to code META Tags, see our META Tag Cheat Sheet

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