How to Learn About Meta Tags

By eHow Internet Editor

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Meta tags are used by search engines use to index Web pages. Using meta tags effectively increases your chances of getting "rated" on a search engine - so other people can easily find your Web site.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Step1

Open a text editing program, such as EditPad or Notepad. Locate and open the file.

Step2

Place the cursor after the tag.

Step3

Type the following: .

Step4

(Replace keywords describing your page where it says "type,keywords,here".) Separate each word or phrase with a comma but no space, as many search engines will treat the space as part of the word and won't recognize it.

Step5

Type the following:

Step6

Save and upload the page. Meta tags aren't seen by the average user but are indexed by search engines.

Tips & Warnings

To make sure your page comes up in a search engine, add as many keywords as you can think of, in order of most important to least important. For example, an auto mechanic's page should include keywords like auto, automobile, car, vehicle, repair, service, transmission, shop, and so on.
In their results lists, many search engines display the title of the page followed by the meta description. The description should be 25 words or less (some search engines require 15 words or less) and should not repeat any words (some search engines will ignore descriptions that repeat words more than twice).
Other meta tags (author, generator, copyright, and expires) identify the author of the page, the application the page was created with, copyright information and when the page becomes out of date.
See "How to Register Your Web Site with Search Engines" for other ways to get your site listed on Yahoo, Alta Vista, and so on.
While repeating keywords again and again may gain your site more exposure with some search engines, others, such as Yahoo, will not catalog submissions with multiple keywords.