| Setting up your
Meta Tags What are they? Briefly, meta tags
are used by search engines to allow them to more accurately list
your site in their indexes. Meta tags are added in the
header section of your page
There are a bunch of meta tags, and I won't go into all of
them here. Check out the links at the bottom of the page
if you're interested in more of them. Be sure to begin
your tag with < and end your tag with > otherwise your
description and keywords will show up on your web site. Here I will discuss
the two most common and essential tags you should have on your
pages.
- Description -
Some search engines will display the description along with
the title of your page when someone does a search - and people
may choose to visit or not visit your site based on that
description. Here's how it should look in the header of your
page:
<meta name="description" content="A SENTENCE OR TWO">
Replace the CAPITALIZED words with a word, sentence or
paragraph to describe your page. The description should not
simply restate the title of the page, but should describe the
page. Make it short, concise and to
the point, but not so short and concise that it doesn't give a
good description of the contents of your page. If you are
tempted to write a 10-sentence paragraph, remember that the
maximum length of a META tag, from the first < to the last >
is 1024 characters. After filling in the <meta
name="description" content="">, it leaves about 998
characters maximum.
- Keywords -
There is a lot of buzz that search engines aren't using the
keyword tag to index your site anymore, but it can't hurt to
include it. The more ways a search engine can index your
site, the better exposure for your site. Keywords should
be the words you think someone would enter in the search
engine if they are trying to find a site like yours.
Here's how it should look in the header of
your page:
<meta name="keywords" content="AAA, BBB, CCC, DDD">
Choose whatever keywords you think are appropriate, each
separated by commas, to replace the CAPITALIZED letters. It
can include as many keywords as you think are appropriate,
keeping in mind that the maximum length of a meta tag is 1024
characters, including everything between the < and >.
Remember to include synonyms, slang, common misspellings, etc.
So, if you have a page on genealogy, you might want to include
keywords such as family, ancestors, descendants, genealogy, geneology,
as well as the family names your site covers.
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