Using Meta Tags To Increase Visitors To Your Site
Most search engines use them, some people think they're magic bullets, and others feel they're useless.
Whatever camp you fall into, meta tags are everywhere. Everyone uses and abuses them. Now, how
do you use them? It's not hard. It just takes some patience, and two lines of HTML code.
Even though we will show you on this page exactly what to do, you can also
use our SOHOHost Meta Tag Creator to do it for you if
you are uncomfortable with doing it yourself.
When some search engines look at a site after it's been submitted, the spider (the program that goes out
and looks at the pages) looks first for meta tags, and if it finds none, will go on and catalog the rest of
the text on the page. The advantage to meta tags is that YOU can specify what keywords your site
will be found under, and YOU can specify what description people see when they finally find your site
in the search engine.
Before you get started, some warnings about meta tags. They are NOT magic bullets. They in no
way guarantee hits or business. The web is becoming an increasingly more commercial place, and with
that comes competition. The best way to get your site noticed is still sleek design, targeted advertising,
and frequently updated, good content.
You have two different meta tags to put in, one for keywords and one for your description. Before
you see how to do it, some tips. Keep your description short, and to the point. Try your best to keep
your description shorter than 50 words, as that's all most search engines will display, if they display
anything at all. Don't use TOO many keywords. Using more than 50 or so is considered overkill. Ok,
now that you have those guidelines, here's how to do it.
If you've never seen HTML before, you may be a little overwhelmed when you see if for the first time.
Don't worry. We'll walk you through it.
- In your web editor open the page you are creating.
- If this page is your home page (either default.htm or index.html) look
for the following: (there should be information below what's shown, but this is all you need
to worry about).
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Your Site's Title</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
- You need to look for the </TITLE> tag (tags are what we call those things between the < and >).
Put the cursor after the </TITLE> and hit enter so you have a clean line between </TITLE> and</HEAD>.
- Now, let's put in those meta tags. Meta tags looks like this:
<meta name="description" content="Put your description here!">
<meta name="keywords" content="your keywords here, separated by commas">
You can either cut and paste them from here, or type them in yourself, as long as when you're
done, your HTML looks like this:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Your Site's Title</TITLE>
<meta name="description" content="Put your description here!">
<meta name="keywords" content="your keywords here, separated by commas">
</HEAD>
<BODY>
- Now that you have everything typed in, close the editor window. It's going to ask you if you
save the file (or overwrite if you are using an existing file). Click ok (or
yes), and you're done! You have meta tags. If you plan on submitting other
pages to the various search engines and directories, we recommend creating a
different set for each page based on the content of the page. At minimum,
you should have meta tags on your home page.
As stated earlier, and to make this a little easier for you, you can also use
the SOHOHost Meta Tag Creator. Fill out the information requested on the form,
and it will create a set of meta tag code for you. We hope this makes adding meta tags to your site a little
easier!
For more tips and tricks regarding meta tags and web submission visit the Search
Channel.
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