by Matt McGee
One World Telecommunications
posted: October 4, 2004
Meta tags are one of the oldest elements of a web page, but they're
also one of the more confusing for many webmasters and web developers.
Meta tags have been a part of web pages since the earliest days
of the WWW, but even after all this time, there are many who don't
understand what they do and how to use them. Hopefully we'll clear
up some of the confusion in this article.
What are Meta tags?
Meta tags are pieces of code that describe a web page. They're
not visible to your web site users, unless the
user views the page's source code. They are, however,
visible to search engine crawlers. There are many
possible Meta tags you could include in a web
page, but the two that are most widely used are
the "Description" tag and "Keywords"
tag. Those are the ones we'll focus on in this
article.
Why are they important?
One reason: search engine crawlers read your meta tags to help
determine what a web page is about. In fact, when you do a web
search at Google, Yahoo, or wherever, the content of the "Description" tag
is often what appears as the text snippet in your listing. Clearly,
then, the "Description" tag is important because this
text is often seen by searchers trying to decide whether or not
to click and visit your page.
The "Keywords" Meta tag carries far less significance
today than it did years ago. In the early days of web search, search
engines relied heavily on your keywords to determine how to rank
pages. But webmasters realized they could abuse this and get their
pages to rank well for words that had nothing to do with their
site, so the importance of the "Keywords" Meta tag quickly
went away. Today, some search engines still look at the "Keywords" tag
-- but don't use it as an important determiner when analyzing and
ranking web pages.
In an April, 2004, interview, Yahoo Search Manager Jon Glick explained
the "keywords" tag thusly:
"For the meta keywords tag... well, originally it was a good idea.
To me it's a great idea which unfortunately went wrong because
its so heavily spammed. It's like, the people who knew how to use
it, also knew how to abuse it! What we use it for right now is...
I'd explain it as match and not rank. Let me give a better description
of what that really means. Obviously, for a page to show up for
a user's query, it has to contain all the terms that the user types,
either on the page, through the meta data, or anchor text in a
link. So, if you have a product which is frequently misspelled,
if you're located in one community, but do business in several
surrounding communities, having the names for those communities
or those alternate spellings in your meta keywords tag means that
your page is now a candidate to show up in that search. That doesn't
say that it'll rank, but at least it's considered. Whereas, if
those words never appear then it can't be considered."
How do I use Meta tags for the most benefit?
Meta Tags are placed up in the HEAD of a web page, between the <head> and </head> tags.
The Meta "Description" tag looks like this:
<Meta Name="Description" Content="Write your
description here. Use real sentences. Describe the content on this
page, using the same keyword and phrases that appear in the content
of the page.">
Don't overdo it. A couple sentences will be adequate for the "Description" Meta
tag.
The Meta "Keywords" tag looks like this:
<Meta Name="Keywords" Content="purple widgets,
purple electronic widgets, desktop widgets, widget gifts, home
office gifts">
Don't overdo it. Keep your list to less than 10-15 keywords/phrases.
Separate each with a comma. Try not to repeat the same word or
phrase too often. Make sure the content of your "Keywords" Meta
tag reflects the content of the page.
That's it for the "Keywords" and "Description" Meta
tags. As mentioned earlier, there are other Meta tags you could
use (Author, Refresh, etc.), but these are the two that are most
widely used and can be somewhat beneficial when they're used correctly.
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