| Dear Internet visitor,
My intention is
to help you own a profitable Internet
Home Business.
Here is
Internet Home Business course that will help and guide
you to start off your Home Business on the Internet.
Lesson #11
INTRODUCTION TO META TAGS
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN:
This lesson will focus on the use of
meta tags in your Website design. You will learn how to
properly place the appropriate meta tags on Web pages
that you create.
A FEW
WORDS ABOUT HTML
HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is
the basic code used to design Web pages. To help get a
feel for HTML, think about the "Markup Language" part of
the name. Remember the old days when an executive penned
out a document and then gave it to the secretary to type
on a typewriter. When the typed document was returned to
the executive, he or she would often "mark it up" with a
pen or pencil, indicating changes that needed to be made
to create the final draft. In efficient offices and the
publishing business, an efficient set of shorthand
symbols was used to "mark up" the documents. Marking up
was also used when a document had to be routed to
several people within an organization. Each person would
leave comments on the document (which were not to be
confused with the original text itself). Thus,
corrections, revisions, and comments to a document were
accomplished by markup symbols.
HTML is not about correcting a
document, but about displaying it. However, HTML is to
some extent based on the historical markup concept. Web
pages at their basic level are simply text documents
prepared in a simple text editor (such as the Notepad or
Wordpad applications built into the MS Windows operating
systems). Web browsing applications (such as Internet
Explorer) can read basic text documents (saved as file
types with the .TXT extension) but do not know how to
format them without a little help. This help comes from
HTML tags placed in the document. When such tags are
placed in the document, the document is given the .HTM
extension (instead of the .TXT extension) so the Web
browser applications will know the document is ready to
be read and formatted in a Web browser. (Unix systems
will use the four-letter.HTML extensions, instead of the
three-letter .HTM file extension used by Windows
operating systems and servers.) The HTML tags serve much
the same purpose as the old mark-up symbols used in
proofreading. The tags tell how the material should be
displayed. They provide font style and size, paragraph
formatting, spacing, listing order, and many other
formatting features. For example, the <P> tag tells the
Web browser to start a new paragraph. The </P> tag (with
the forward slash) signals the end of the paragraph.
As you can see from the above example,
HTML tags usually come in pairs. The opening tag is
placed right before the text you wish to effect and the
closing tag is placed right after the text you wish to
effect. Some tags are an exception to this pairing rule,
however, and all of the information is placed within a
single tag. All HTML tags must be placed within the
<head> and </head> tags on a Web page.
Before we get into meta tags, there is
one other HTML tag with which you should be familiar.
The comment tag is used to add comments about the page.
These comments are not visible to those who view the
page in a Web browser, but are visible to those who read
the file as a text document. This is important because
the search engines read a Web page as a text document
and see the comments. The comment tag looks like this:
<comment> -- this a comment not
visible from a Web browser, but visible when the
source text file is read ---</comment>
HTML, like everything else having to
do with computers and the Internet, comes in different
versions. Newer browsers support the newer versions of
HTML. This is only important so that you will understand
that some people who use old versions of Web browsers
may not get the effect of HTML tags (including meta
tags) supported only by the newer versions.
A
WORD ABOUT KEYWORDS
We introduced you to keywords in the
previous lesson. Search engines, in one way or another,
index your Web pages by keywords. Before you begin to
design your meta tags, you need to have determined your
keywords and your keyword strategy.
With respect to keyword strategy, you
should become familiar with the concept of "key
phrases." Key phrases are keywords that consist of more
than one keyword. For example, you could have the
keywords: "earning" and "profit," but you could also
combine them into the key phrase: "earning profit." Due
to the stiff competition in search engine placement, you
should use key phrases along with keywords. Key phrases
are much more precise in finding particular subject
matter. The key phrase "earning profit" is more likely
to be searched for by someone looking for pages
discussing how a home-based entrepreneur can earn
profit, while the keywords "earning" and "profit" used
separately may be used by people looking for pages
comparing the earnings and profits of various industries
and large corporations. For a searcher, using key
phrases helps to narrow down the results of a search.
For a Webmaster, using key phrases on your page
increases the likelihood that your page will show up
when your target market searches.
Keywords and phrases are important in
all of the meta tags, not just the keywords meta tag.
Thus, the first step in preparing your meta tags is to
identify your keywords, and, more importantly, your key
phrases and the strategy behind them.
THE
TWO CATEGORIES OF META TAGS
Meta tags are often divided into two
categories: 1)HTTP-EQUIV, and 2) meta tags with a NAME
attribute. You should not be confused or concerned with
this, as we mention it here only so you can ignore it.
The difference between these two types of meta tags has
to do with how the Web browser applications talk to the
Internet Web server applications before the actual Web
page is sent. (Recall we discussed this concept briefly
in an earlier lesson on Web page design.) But, for now,
you do not need to worry about it.
META TAGS USED IN
PROMOTION
While there are many different meta
tags that do many different things (from refreshing your
page automatically to preventing your page from being
cached), our focus is on those tags that serve to
promote your site in the search engines. The main ones
are "title," "keywords," "description," and the "robots"
tags.
THE
TITLE META TAG
The "title" opening and closing meta
tags look like this:
<title>Put the title of your Web
page here.</title>
To draft your page title, pick your
two most important key phrases and include them in a
sentence or two that does not exceed 200 characters.
Make this an attention grabbing, powerful sentence. Some
of the search engines will use your title along side
your link in the search engine listings. Your title will
be the information used by people to decide whether to
click through to your page. You have to make them want
to see the page by the wording of your page title. Many
search engines search the title content first when
matching keywords. Thus, be sure to include your most
important keywords and key phrases in your title meta
tag,
THE KEYWORDS META TAG
As discussed in the last lesson, the
keywords meta tag looks like this:
<META Name="keywords"
Content="first key phrase, second key phrase,
keyword1, keyword2, keyword3, etc">
Note that, unlike the title tag which
has an opening tag and a closing tag with the text
between the tag pairs, the keyword meta tag is just one
tag with the text of the keywords and key phrases
included within the quotation marks in the content
attribute of the tag.
There is always an ongoing debate
among the experts as to how many keywords you should
use, whether to include the commas and/or the spaces
between the keywords and phrases, and other such issues.
The best course for beginners to follow is to start the
list with two or three key phrases (such as "earning
income, part time income, . . . ") and then add about
twenty (20) more single keywords, including the keywords
that make up the two key phrases. That is, in the
example above, your keyword tag might look like this:
<META Name="keywords"
Content="earning income, earning parttime income,
earn, earning, income, earning, money, earning,
profit, parttime, work, learn, homebased,
entrepreneur, marketing, sales, business, course,
opportunity, wealth, rich, financial, security,
sixfigure">
The strategy is in using key phrases
rather than just keywords. Also, the strategy is in
which words and phrases you pick to use. Further, there
is strategy in the order of placing your keywords. Note
the places where the keyword "earning" is repeated in
the example above. It ties the keyword "earning" to the
words that come before it as well as the words which
come after it, thus doubling the chances of matching a
search phrase in some search engines. Picking the right
words and phrases to match the content of your site to
search queries made by your target market is the name of
the game. Exactly how many words you use, and whether
you use spaces or commas are secondary considerations
which you can safely ignore for now.
The final consideration for the
keywords tag is to avoid keyword spamming (repetitive
use of a single keyword in order to manipulate search
engine indexing and ranking). Do not use the same word
repetitively, at least without other meaningful keywords
between each instance of your main keyword. There is no
known exact number of times you can repeat a single
keyword before it will be considered keyword spamming by
the major search engines. The number seven is touted
about as the maximum number of times you can use a
single keyword, but there is no real basis for this
number. Looking back at our last lesson and the
considerations discussed there will help you to realize
that whether keyword spamming has occurred depends on
how meaningful and useful it is to repeat a keyword, in
light of the content of the site. Less important is
trying to determine any particular number of repetitions
that will penalize the site.
THE DESCRIPTION META
TAG
The description meta tag looks like
this:
<Meta Name="Description"
Content="Put the description of your site here">
Use your keywords and key phrases in
your description, but make it meaningful! Like the title
tag, what you put in the description tag content is used
by some search engines to tell people what your site is
about. It's your only chance to motivate most people to
click to your site.
Common questions include: "How long
can the description be?" and "How many times can you
repeat your keywords in it?" Again, there are no exact
answers to these questions. The rule of thumb is just to
describe your site as attractively as you can using the
fewest words possible. Put the most important stuff
first in your description so that, if some of the
description does get truncated by the search engines,
the important stuff will likely still be included.
In addition to using a description
meta tag, it is also smart to include the description in
an HTML comment at the top of the page. Some of the
search engines simply ignore the meta tags and grab the
first few words they see on your page. Even better, use
your description as the beginning of the displayed page
itself. If worded properly, your description will serve
to entice your visitors to continue reading your
Website.
THE
ROBOT META TAGS
Despite the standards specifications
for the robot tag, which suggest a means of controlling
the search engines, in reality the robot tag is only
used by most search engines to honor your wishes to
exclude certain pages and content from the search
engine's reach. Your instructions for revisits (which
can be included in the robot meta tag) are pretty much
ignored. But it is very useful to be able to exclude
incomplete or distracting content that may interfere
with your search engine rankings.
You can tell a search engine to ignore
a page and all the links from that page with the
following tag:
<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="noindex,nofollow">
To be safe with most engines, you
should also include a text file named "robots.txt" in
any directories on your Webserver that you want excluded
from the search engines and put the words "noindex,
nofollow" in that file as well.
Thus, the robot meta tag can be used
to exclude certain content which you feel will penalize
your ranking in the search engines, either because the
content is incomplete or because it is off-subject from
the rest of your content.
CONCLUSION
There are no magic rules that apply to
all search engines. However, there are standards for
meta tags that are followed to some extent by some of
the search engines. It is important to properly include
meta tags in your Web pages. The most important of these
meta tags are the title, keywords, and description tags.
A common strategy applies to the use of all three of
these tags. Pick out the important keywords and key
phrases that best match both the content of your site
and the search queries most likely to be used by your
target market. Order these words properly in these three
tags so as to accomplish the best use of language and
best positioning of the keywords and phrases to match
likely search queries of your target market. Do not
worry so much about how many words you use or how many
times you repeat them. Rather, be concerned with the
meaningfulness of your tags when compared to the actual
content of your site.
Then, work to improve your ranking in
the search engines by improving the quality of the
content of your site to more closely match the search
queries you anticipate from your target market, and
adjust your meta tags accordingly.
WHAT'S COMING NEXT
More on Search Engines! Looking at
specific search engines.
by George Little
Copyright (year) Panhandle On-Line, Inc.
License granted to Carson Services, Inc. for
distribution to SFI affiliates. No part of this work may
be republished, redistributed, or sold without written
permission of the author.
For more information on the Internet Income
Course and other works and courses by George Little, see
www.profitpropulsion.com.
For Web Hosting services specially designed for
SFI affiliates, see www.profitpropulsion.com.
Continue To Next Lesson
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