Is Your Web Site In The Search Engines? Find Out Here - it's FREE!

Meta Tags are HTML tags used to control your site description in the search engines that support them: Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, AOL Search, AltaVista, AllTheWeb (FAST), HotBot, Lycos, Infoseek (Go), Excite, and WebCrawler. It is important to have well made meta tags because they can help increase your Search Engine Position. 

Below you can generate meta tags for your site freely

http://www.onlinemetatag.com/

Web Site Title
What It Is: A web site title is a line of text that is programmed into your web page.

Where Is It Located: It is not seen in the regular page by people but instead it appears at the very top of their actual browser in the top left hand corner. For example, the web site title contained in
http://www.dell.com is:

Dell Computer - Laptop, Desktop, Workstation, Server

Go ahead and go there and you will see it in the very top left corner of your browser. (browser means Netscape or Microsoft Internet Explorer)

How Important Is It: "Extremely Important"
Many search engines place a tremendous amount of weight and value to what you have used in your web site title.

What Should It Contain: It should normally be no more than about 10 words in length and should be exclusively directed towards words that are specifically related to your product or service. The reason for this is that the search engines figure that you would only be putting items in your web site title that are very closely related to your web sites topic. It’s only logical - you would not put words in your title talking about "ice cream" when in fact your web site sells "automotive parts."

It would look something like this for a paint store:

Keyword Meta Tags

What Are Meta Tags?: Meta-Tags are pieces of programming that are NOT seen by human beings on your web page. They instead are seen by many of the search engines and are used to help decide where to place you in their search engine results. They are programmed into your web site code by your programmer.

What Are Keywords: They are the words that people will use to try to find your products or services on the internet using the various search engines and directories. When you look for a topic in the search engines, you type in a specific word into Yahoo, Altavista etc., which relates to your desired request. In our above example, we would lookup paint, or wholesale paint supplies, or wholesale paint Denver. We would then get back a list of web sites that contain information about the keywords we selected.

Carefully Picking Your Keywords: It is critical that you choose keywords that are 100% related to your products or services AND you need to list them in the order of importance. Meaning, you should take a piece of paper, write down all the words that you feel people would use to try to find your products or services. (a good hint here is what would you use to try to find your competition in the search engines). Now that you have them listed on the paper, put a number next to each one starting with the number 1 being the very most important word that you feel people would try to use most often to find your product/services. Then put a 2 next to the next most important one and so on.
Keywords for the above example might be - paint, painting supplies, wholesale, retail, airless sprayers, paint hoses, kelley moore, Kelley Moore, Denver, denver Do NOT use words that are not related to your products/services. We have seen where people have put in the words, "sex, gay, xxx, adult" etc., thinking that this would increase their chances of being seen in the search engines. This is False and will actually hurt you. Many search engines are intelligent enough to look for those specific examples and will "Reject" your submission if it is "off topic" meaning that it is not really does not match the content of your web site.

Where Do I Put My Keywords: They go in your web page programming in an area called Meta Tags. If you need to learn more about Meta Tags, consult with your programmer or you may obtain information on the web about them. Be sure though that you place them correctly or they can not only be useless but can actually cause damage to your search engines results. If you need help working on your Meta Tags, we can work with you for a small programming fee. Just give us a call.

Should I Use Caps Or No Caps: This has been a question that has caused more confusion than ever. We recommend that you use only Caps on proper names, i.e. New York etc. But, we would also put in new york as well.

Description Meta Tag

What Are Meta Tags?: Meta-Tags are pieces of programming that are NOT seen by human beings on your web page. They instead are seen by many of the search engines and are used to help decide where to place you in their search engine results. They are programmed into your web site code by your programmer.

What Is A Meta Tag Description: It is a 1 to 2 sentence description that will be used by many of the search engines to describe your web site to their users. When you go to a search engine and type in a keyword, you get back a list of results. Under each web site they display, there is a brief description telling you about each web sites products or services.

How Important is a Description: Well, first, not all search engines use the Description Meta Tag. For those that don’t they will usually take some of your web page text and make up their own description about what you do or offer. For those search engines that DO use the Description Meta Tag, it is CRITICAL that you provide this to them. Let me put it this way - If you don’t properly plan the use of your Meta Tags, you might as well throw out about 50% of your potential visitors.

What Should My Description Say: It should be concise and no longer than about 25 to 30 words. It should contain as many of your most important keywords as possible. An example would be: Paint and painting supplies. Wholesale and retail. Airless sprayers and painting equipment available. Kelly Moore paints in Denver Colorado.

Body Content

Is Your Web Page Content Relevant And Focused: One of the big mistakes people make is having way too much information on their web sites "main page." What I mean by that is that they may be selling time share condo vacations in Hawaii. The problem is that when you actually take a look at their sites main page, it talks about the sea shore, the local restaurants, the local theaters, the local parks and recreation. Instead, it should be more focused on the words and theme of "time share, condo, vacation, Hawaii, ocean front" etc. It should also contain all of your keywords in text form on the web page. This is used to help assist the Meta Tags become more relevant to the search engines that use them and to the search engines that don’t use it provides words that are relevant so they can see you in the list.

Where Are Your Keywords Place On Your Main Page? This also is very important. The higher on the page, the better. Let me explain "higher." On a normal page, one that does not use tables, the search engines read the text just like we do, from the top to bottom. They will tend to place more weight on the words that are positioned towards the top of the page versus the words that are buried lets say 300 words from the top. OK, so what does this mean? On your web page, you will want to type your text so that towards the top of the page (not by position but meaning as it compares to the other words in the page) you have placed a brief description of what it is you do or sell. Use your keywords in this area. It is very important.

What About Graphics: Don’t be fooled by graphics. The search engines can't read them. So, every picture, logo, etc. on your web site is useless (except for image tags, more on that later). They will not provide any information to the search engines that can help your placement. They look nice but you need to provide the information to the search engines in "TEXT" format. It must be words that humans can read and NOT graphic images.

Frames

Should I Use Them: Frames can really provide a great navigational assist to your web site. But, they can and are a search engines nightmare. The reason is that a "framed" web page is actually made up of several web pages being shown at the same time. For example, a web page that has a Top Panel, a Side Panel, and a Main Panel is actually displaying 3 web pages all at the same time. They are presented on the screen as a result of a main file, usually an index.htm type of file that tells a person’s browser how to display the framed web page portions. It is this page that most people don’t realize is the one where you have to put your Meta Tags and include a brief description in a area.
This is VERY Important Be sure to talk to your programmer about this area as you cannot afford to skip this VERY IMPORTANT STEP.
There are several good resource books on the subject or your programmer can steer you in the right direction. If you need help with your frames Meta Tags, just give our programming department a call. There is a nominal fee for the assistance but it is worth every bit.

Spamming

Do You Mean E-mail Spamming? No - actually I mean the use of the same word over and over and over again in your Meta Tags or within your web page. Here is an example:
Atlanta hotels, Atlanta restaurants, Atlanta movies, Atlanta parks, Atlanta motels, Atlanta recreation, Atlanta gambling, Atlanta etc.
See how this is Spamming? Although they are really different things, many search engines will consider this to be spamming. A proper way to perform this would be to have:
Atlanta hotels, restaurants, atlanta movies, parks, motels, recreation, gambling,
See, we covered all the keywords but you did not over do it. Yes, it is tempting but don’t do it. They search engine spam police will get you. You can however make sure that you cover the word Atlanta in your text along with the other words. Just make sure that they are in proper sentence structure and not just words repeated.

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