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Meta tags and how to use them

January 25th, 2009

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.

About the author: Benjamin Wigoder is a part-time webmaster who has proven that anybody can be successful on the web.

Visit www.benwiggy.com for more info on website building.

Author: Benjamin Wigoder

 

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Being a webmaster is a much more important job than most companies would dare admit. Webmasters are responsible for the company web presence on every level, from the website copy to the web and email server administration. Additionally, webmasters are often tasked even more duties that should be considered unrelated responsibilities for the position of webmaster. These extra duties often will include online as well as offline promotion and marketing, search optimization, advertising, application programming, graphic design and/or brand management. The role of the webmaster has grown over the years and webmasters need to grow with the company's expectations or the website will not succeed. For instance, it is easy to get banned from the search engines for not knowing the correct methods to use to optimize a website for a better results ranking from the search engines for any particular search phrase.

This is why Webmastery is here, not just to offer direction and assist webmasters, but to do so masterfully, as you expect of yourself, or as your company expects out of you.
 

Since I am an American and know only American English and SEO methods, I specialize in American Webmastery. Hence the domain name, Webmastery.US.
 

However, please note that often both sides of the coin are presented here. Some webmasters swear by Linux and we offer articles by such authors to give insight to their creativity. Others are die-hard Microsoft software fans and use Windows based servers. Despite the bias, each system has its own advantages, and such articles are reprinted here for their positive contribution to those platforms, not to enforce their bias. It is we that have to make the final analysis.
 

This difference is even more apparent when I am showcasing and promoting white hat SEO (search engine optimization) and a black hat SEO article is published here, which method if followed could get a website banned from the search engines. The reason I allow it a small platform is to showcase its apparent and obvious idiocy in contrast to white hat SEO techniques. And as I cannot edit these articles in order to correct them, I let their illogicality and stupidity stand on their own for a time without any edits. But in case their spaminess is not apparent, I often do not let such articles stand long.
 

 


 

 

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