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What are META tags?
META tags provide important information about your Web page that is not immediately visible to a visitor. These tags may be used by search engines to classify and to rank your page.
The two most important META tags are the Keyword META tag and the META Description tag. META tags are placed between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags. Web design software generally provide commands for introducing these META tags. Some Search Engines consider the content of the META tags to be extremely important so that they form a critical part of their algorithms that determine your page rankings. Other search engines seem to ignore them. Be an internet spy and look at the source codes of competitor sites that are at the top of the rankings and in particular look at their META tags.
Tags are codes in HTML that instruct a browser on how to display a Web page. HTML is composed of elements. Images and paragraphs are examples of elements. Each element has a tag, an attribute and usually content. In HTML, every element is defined by a start (<code for tag>) and an end tag which has the same code as the start tag with the addition of a slash ( </code for tag>). The content of a tag is enclosed between the start and end tags.
Examples of tags:
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Start tag |
End tag |
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Paragraph |
<p> |
</p> |
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Italic text |
<i> |
</i> |
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Bold text |
<b> |
</b> |
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Line Break |
<br> |
</br> |
Headings are text elements that are set as bold with sizes from H1 down to H6.
H1 is for the main heading of the page. The H1 line is the 'header'. You
should ensure that your keywords for that page are included in the header.
An attribute modifies an element. Thus the dimensions of an image are defined by
height and width attributes within the start tag.
e.g. <IMG width=“150” height=“90”>
Meta tags are special tags. Some programs allow the user to see part of the page as it appears to the user and the underlying HTML simultaneously. It is also possible to view the HTML of a Web page that you have downloaded. With Internet Explorer, you can move the cursor onto a plane area of background of the page, right-click and select ‘view source’.
What should be included in the META description tag?
You should provide a brief description for each page. The most important keywords for the page should be included. The Meta Description should consist of sentences.
What should be included in the META keyword tag?
There is variation of opinion on the number of keywords that you should include. Some suggest just a few, limiting them to the absolute essentials. Others suggest twenty or thirty. I would suggest taking a look at the Web sites of your main competitors and counting the number of keywords they have used in their keyword tags. Furthermore, you may find some suggestions that you had not considered. It would, however, be inappropriate to simply copy their list. One of the pleasures of Web design is the opportunity to demonstrate originality.
How important are META tags?
Only some search engines pay any attention to META Keywords and descriptions. The page title is the most important element for the majority of search engines. You may wish to do a little research to see whether high ranking sites competing with you use META tags. (See Be An Internet Spy!)
How Do I add META tags in Frontpage?
- Open the page that you want to create META tags for in the FrontPage Editor
- Right click on the Page and select Page Properties
- Click the Custom tab
- In the User Variables click Add
-
In the Name
box, type description
(or keywords for the META keyword tag)
- In the Value box type the description of the site that you wrote
- Click OK
- Click Add again, In the Name box, type keywords
- In the Value box type the keyword list you wrote, separate each list item with a comma, click OK
- You're done! View the document source to checkout your new META tags
