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:

The Meta Keywords Tag

The meta keywords tag allows you to provide additional text for crawler-based search engines to index along with your body copy. How does this help you? Well, for most major crawlers, it doesn't. That's because most crawlers now ignore the tag. The few supporting it can be found on the Search Engine Features page).

The meta keywords tag is sometimes useful as a way to reinforce the terms you think a page is important for ON THE FEW CRAWLERS THAT SUPPORT IT. For instance, if you had a page about stamp collecting -- AND you say the words stamp collecting at various places in your body copy -- then mentioning the words "stamp collecting" in the meta keywords tag MIGHT help boost your page a bit higher for those words.

Remember, if you don't use the words "stamp collecting" on the page at all, then just adding them to the meta keywords tag is extremely unlikely to help the page do well for the term. The text in the meta keywords tag, FOR THE FEW CRAWLERS THAT SUPPORT IT, works in conjunction with the text in your body copy.

The meta keyword tag is also sometimes useful as a way to help your page come up for synonyms or unusual words that don't appear on the page itself. For instance, let's say you had a page all about the "Penny Black" stamp. You never actually say the word "collecting" on this page. By having the word in your meta keywords tag, then you may help increase the odds of coming up if someone searched for "penny black stamp collecting." Of course you would greater increase the odds if you just used the word "collecting" in the body copy of the page itself.

Pick Your Target Keywords

How do you think people will search for your web page? The words you imagine them typing into the search box are your target keywords.

For example, say you have a page devoted to stamp collecting. Anytime someone types "stamp collecting," you want your page to be in the top ten results. Then those are your target keywords for that page.

Each page in your web site will have different target keywords that reflect the page's content. For example, say you have another page about the history of stamps. Then "stamp history" might be your keywords for that page.

Your target keywords should always be at least two or more words long. Usually, too many sites will be relevant for a single word, such as "stamps." This "competition" means your odds of success are lower. Don't waste your time fighting the odds. Pick phrases of two or more words, and you'll have a better shot at success

Position Your Keywords

Make sure your target keywords appear in the crucial locations on your web pages. The page's HTML title tag is most important. Failure to put target keywords in the title tag is the main reason why perfectly relevant web pages may be poorly ranked. More about the title tag can be found on the How HTML Meta Tags Work page.

Build your titles around the top two or three phrases that you would like the page to be found for. The titles should be relatively short and attractive. Think of newspaper headlines. With a few words, they make you want to read a story. Similarly, your page titles are like headlines for your pages. They appear in search engine listings, and a short, attractive title may help make users click through to your site.

Search engines also like pages where keywords appear "high" on the page, as described more fully on the Search Engine Ranking page. To accommodate them, use your target keywords for your page headline, if possible. Have them also appear in the first paragraphs of your web page.

Keep in mind that tables can "push" your text further down the page, making keywords less relevant because they appear lower on the page. This is because tables break apart when search engines read them. For example, picture a typical two-column page, where the first column has navigational links, while the second column has the keyword loaded text. Humans see that page like this:

Have Relevant Content

Changing your page titles is not necessarily going to help your page do well for your target keywords if the page has nothing to do with the topic. Your keywords need to be reflected in the page's content.

In particular, that means you need HTML text on your page. Sometimes sites present large sections of copy via graphics. It looks pretty, but search engines can't read those graphics. That means they miss out on text that might make your site more relevant. Some of the search engines will index ALT text and comment information. But to be safe, use HTML text whenever possible. Some of your human visitors will appreciate it, also.

Be sure that your HTML text is "visible." Some designers try to spam search engines by repeating keywords in a tiny font or in the same color at the background color to make the text invisible to browsers. Search engines are catching on to these and other tricks. Expect that if the text is not visible in a browser, then it may not be indexed by a search engine.

Finally, consider "expanding" your text references, where appropriate. For example, a stamp collecting page might have references to "collectors" and "collecting." Expanding these references to "stamp collectors" and "stamp collecting" reinforces your strategic keywords in a legitimate and natural manner. Your page really is about stamp collecting, but edits may have reduced its relevancy unintentionally.

Meta Robots Tag

One other meta tag worth mentioning is the robots tag. This lets you specify that a particular page should NOT be indexed by a search engine. To keep spiders out, simply add this text between your head tags on each page you don't want indexed. The format is shown below (click on the picture if you want to copy and past the HTML for your own use):