Meta tags and how to use them: Part 1

Meta tags and how to use them: Part 1

Meta tags are still very important for SEO (search engine optimization) and in this tutorial you will learn how to use meta tags constructively and how to place them on your own website. When you have finished creating your meta tags and they are uploaded to the internet visit Widexl Meta Tag Analyzer which will help you improve your meta tags. Placement <HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Meta Tag Tutorial </TITLE> <meta name="keywords" content="meta tag, guide, tutorial"> </HEAD> <link rev="made" href="user@domain.com"> This tag tells the search engine or curious user the email address of author of the website. It is a good idea to include this tag, especially if you sell your webmaster services to others. <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> This tells the search engines and browsers the document character set, see the W3 Character Set Documentation for more information. <meta name="keywords" content="keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3"> Use these tags to list the different keywords you would like search engines to list you for. Select relevant keywords to the content on your site. It is important to have a high keyword relevancy and a good keyword density. <meta name="description" content="User Friendly description of your website."> Use this meta tag to describe your website. This should be user friendly because many search engines display this text as the description of your website. <meta name="author" content="Your Full Name"> This tag should be included so that you can claim credit for the site and as information services (like Alexa) may list this information. <meta name="robots" content="Index, Follow"> This tag plays two parts, the first part is to tell a search engine whether or not to index the current page and the next is to tell it whether or not to follow links on the page. The possible values are: Index, NoIndex & Follow, NoFollow. <meta name="revisit-after" content="2 Days"> This tells the Robot how long to wait before it revisits the page. <meta name="language" content="en-uk"> This tells the search engines and browsers what language the page is in. <meta name="rating" content="General"> This classifies the rating of your page. Possible values are; General, 14 years, Restricted, Mature. <meta name="distribution" content="global"> This tag is optional as most webmasters want their site to be viewed worldwide. However, if your site is relevant only locally then this may be a good opportunity to use this tag. <title>Title of page</title> Although this is not a meta tag is should be treated with care. It should be used as an extension of the keywords of the page yet user-friendly. Conclusion Use all the tags above and follow the guidelines and a large amount of your search engine optimization is complete. Although large companies will hire professionals for the job smaller companies do it themselves as it is relatively simple. Meta tags are a vital part of the search engine optimization process. The rumour that they are now not important is not true, as Google, the search engine giant, has mentioned in the SEO section on its website.