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Want to get a top ranking in search engines? No problem! All you need to do is add a few magical “meta tags” to your web pages, and you'll skyrocket to the top of the listings.
If only it were so easy. Let's make it clear:
- Meta tags are not a magic solution.
- Meta tags are not a magic solution.
- Meta tags are not a magic solution.
Meta tags have never been a guaranteed way to gain a top ranking on crawler-based search engines. Today, the most valuable feature they offer the web site owner is the ability to control to some degree how their web pages are described by some search engines. They also offer the ability to prevent pages from being indexed at all. This page explores these and other meta tag-related features in more depth.
Meta Tag Overview
What are meta tags? They are information inserted into the “head” area of your web pages. Other than the title tag (explained below), information in the head area of your web pages is not seen by those viewing your pages in browsers. Instead, meta information in this area is used to communicate information that a human visitor may not be concerned with. Meta tags, for example, can tell a browser what “character set” to use or whether a web page has self-rated itself in terms of adult content.
Let's see two common types of meta tags, then we'll discuss exactly how they are used in more depth:
Mar 5, 2007
<a href=”http://oasc05024.247realmedia.com/RealMedia/ads/click_nx.ads/searchenginewatch.com/archive/309051631@Left,x30,Left1,x11,x12,x13,x14,x15,x16,x17,x18,x19,x20,x62,x63,x64,x65,x66!Position3″ rel=”nofollow”> <img src=”http://oasc05024.247realmedia.com/RealMedia/ads/adstream_nx.ads/searchenginewatch.com/archive/309051631@Left,x30,Left1,x11,x12,x13,x14,x15,x16,x17,x18,x19,x20,x62,x63,x64,x65,x66!Position3″> </A> 
Related Reading Using & in Meta Title Monthly twice changing of meta description any effects in SERP Hello Uregent Help Needed h2 tags - bad when used in your main links? Suggested Searches search engines - local search - meta description - meta title 
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Want to get a top ranking in search engines? No problem! All you need to do is add a few magical “meta tags” to your web pages, and you'll skyrocket to the top of the listings.
If only it were so easy. Let's make it clear:
- Meta tags are not a magic solution.
- Meta tags are not a magic solution.
- Meta tags are not a magic solution.
Meta tags have never been a guaranteed way to gain a top ranking on crawler-based search engines. Today, the most valuable feature they offer the web site owner is the ability to control to some degree how their web pages are described by some search engines. They also offer the ability to prevent pages from being indexed at all. This page explores these and other meta tag-related features in more depth.
Meta Tag Overview
What are meta tags? They are information inserted into the “head” area of your web pages. Other than the title tag (explained below), information in the head area of your web pages is not seen by those viewing your pages in browsers. Instead, meta information in this area is used to communicate information that a human visitor may not be concerned with. Meta tags, for example, can tell a browser what “character set” to use or whether a web page has self-rated itself in terms of adult content.
Let's see two common types of meta tags, then we'll discuss exactly how they are used in more depth:
In the example above, you can see the beginning of the page's “head” area as noted by the <HEAD> tag — it ends at the portion shown as </HEAD>.
Meta tags go in between the “opening” and “closing” HEAD tags. Shown in the example is a TITLE tag, then a META DESCRIPTION tag, then a META KEYWORDS tag. Let's talk about what these do.
The Title Tag
The HTML title tag isn't really a meta tag, but it's worth discussing in relation to them. Whatever text you place in the title tag (between the <TITLE> and </TITLE> portions as shown in the example) will appear in the reverse bar of someone's browser when they view the web page. For instance, within the title tag of this page that you are reading is this text:
How To Use HTML Meta Tags
If you look at the reverse bar in your browser, then you should see that text being used, similar to this:
Some browsers also supplement whatever you put in the title tag by adding their own name, as you can see Microsoft's Internet Explorer doing in the picture above.
The title tag is also used as the words to describe your page when someone adds it to their “Favorites” or “Bookmarks” lists. For instance, if you added this page to your Favorites in Internet Explorer, it would show up like this:
How did that little Search Engine Watch logo also show up? Everyone always asks. The article below provides more help:
Creating Your Own Favicon.ico Icon For IE5
Web Developer's Journal, March 7, 2000
http://www.webdevelopersjournal.com/articles/favicon.html
But what about search engines! The title tag is crucial for them. The text you use in the title tag is one of the most important factors in how a search engine may decide to rank your web page (see the Search Engine Placement Tips section for more details). In addition, all major crawlers will use the text of your title tag as the text they use for the title of your page in your listings.
For example, this is how Teoma lists the page you are reading:
You can see that the text “How To Use HTML Meta Tags” is used as the hyperlinked title of this page's listed in Teoma's results.
In review, think about the key terms you'd like your page to be found for in crawler-based search engines, then incorporate those terms into your title tag in a short, descriptive fashion. That text will then be used as your title in crawler-based search engines, as well as the title in bookmarks and in browser reverse bars.
The Meta Description Tag
The meta description tag allows you to influence the description of your page in the crawlers that support the tag (these are listed on the Search Engine Features page).
Look back at the example of a meta tag. See the first meta tag shown, the one that says “name=description”? That's the meta description tag. The text you want to be shown as your description goes between the quotation marks after the “content=” portion of the tag (generally, 200 to 250 characters may be indexed, though only a smaller portion of this amount may be displayed).
For this page you are reading, I would like it described in a search engine's listings like this:
This tutorial explains how to use HTML meta tags, with links
to meta tag generators and builders. From SearchEngineWatch.com,
a guide to search engine submission and registration.
Will this happen? Not with every search engine. For example, Google ignores the meta description tag and instead will automatically generate its own description for this page. Others may support it partially. For instance, let's see again how this page is listed in Teoma:
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