Meta Tags

What Is a Meta Tag? (from builder.com)
Meta tags are used to define meta data, which is information about a document. The World Wide Web Consortium defines it as "machine understandable information for the Web." Traditionally, the information we put on the page is content. Meta data is information used to describe or define that content. Meta data sits silently in the HEAD element, adding commentary to the page for anyone--or anything--who cares to look. All of these tags provide different information about the page. None of them contribute to how the content is formatted or how it looks. Although some search engines index all the words on a Web page, often the first few words get the most exposure. For example, in the absence of a description meta tag, AltaVista uses the first few words on the page when it returns a set of search results.

By using two targeted tags to summarize your site and pinpoint the most relevant terms, you home in on what your site is really about. Your site may be about growing herbs, but if terms and strings such as "herb gardening", "herbs", and "garden" don't appear on the main page, your presence in a search engine isn't going to be accurate.

Using the description tag, you'll enter a sentence or two describing the page. Many search engines use this information when a list of search results is returned.

The description tag for our gardening site might look like this:

<META name="description" content="Find out everything you need to know about growing herbs in your backyard.">

This description is short and to the point. It doesn't try to account for every single page on the site. Instead, it's a solid summarization of the site's primary content. The description for your home page will be broader than the ones you might use on subpages.

It's important that you keep your description less than 25 words. Thinking that you'll really get noticed if your description is the longest one returned, you might be tempted to put in a whole paragraph or more, but don't waste the kilobytes. Search engines use a set amount of characters in the descriptions they return. If yours is too long, it will be cut off abruptly.

Create a simple sentence that will make users want to click through to your site.

After carefully considering the site's function and audience, the keywords tag for our gardening site might resemble the following:

<META name="keywords" content="herbs, herb garden, growing herbs, gardening, garden, herbology">

You can always revise and add to your keywords listing. By filling in the relevant terms, phrases and concepts related to your site, you increase your chances that people searching for the site's information will find it. Because many search engines are case sensitive, it's recommended that you use lowercase keywords, because that is how most users enter search terms.

The words returned by many search engines comes from the TITLE container on your HTML page, so don't overlook this element.

The meta data information should be written in the HEAD section of your document, after the TITLE tags and before the </HEAD> tag. The Meta tag generator will write out the code you need to paste into the HEAD of your document. Here is an example of the meta data from the Whitehouse Web site:

<meta name="description" content="The University of Oklahoma is a doctoral degree-granting research university serving the educational, cultural, economic and health care needs of the state, region and nation.">
<meta name="keywords" content="University of Oklahoma, OU, sooners, Oklahoma, national merit scholars, Big 12, boren, Norman, President Boren, David Boren, National Champions, museums, doctoral degree, public higher education, excellence">

Meta tag Generator