Formatting of your meta tags:

Meta tags have a pretty straightforward format that consists of a meta name and its content. For example, the keyword meta tag would look like this:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”keyword1,keyword2”>

Other meta tags can be created by simply replacing the “name” variable with whatever tag you are generating. The most important meta tags are the keyword and description tags and are generally what search engines look at when it comes to determining the content on your website. You may also want to consider using the “revisit” meta tag to let search engines know that your content changes regularly and should be revisited at a determined interval.

<meta name=”revisit-after” content=”7 days”>

What content should be in the meta tags:

Over the years, meta tags have regularly been abused by spammers and have actually caused the importance of meta tags to go down in search engine criteria. However, it is still considered so let’s make the most out of it. Keep your keywords in your meta tag consistent with the written content on your website. In other words, if your website isn’t about sex, don’t include sex in your keyword list just because it’s a popular term and you’re hoping to reap the benefits of a highly searched keyword. It won’t work. When it comes to the keyword meta tag start by including the keywords that you used in your websites “<title>” tag.  The first words in your meta tag are generally given the most weight so make them count. Get all of your keywords from the content that is on the web page. If you list a word or phrase in the keyword meta tag, it should also be a word found on the public view of your website.

Use Meta Robots Tags:

There are several meta tags that you can include in your website that will specify the way you want your website to be indexed by the search engines. If you don’t include a robot meta tag, the default is assumed to be “Index,Follow”. There are four basic meta robot tags:

Index,Follow – Your website will be crawled by the search engine starting from your main website home page and will continue crawling all other pages within your website.

Index, NoFollow – Only your main home page of your website will be crawled by the engines. All other links to other pages within your website are not indexed.

NoIndex, Follow – Your main home page of your website will not be indexed by the search engine but all other pages will be.

NoIndex, NoFollow – Nothing on your website will be indexed.

Example: <meta name=”robots” content=” Index,Follow”>

How can images help:

While not directly related to a meta tag all of the images on your website can actually help you improve the rankings that your meta tags receive. All images can have a “alt” attribute in the code that inserts an image onto your page. You can use this “alt” attribute to insert one or two keywords from your meta tag to help increase the keywords showing on your website content as well as enforce the validity of the words listed in your meta tags.

The all important TITLE tag:

The title of your website is placed within the <title> and </title> tags on your website and plays a very important role in your search engine ranking. The title tag must work in conjunction with your meta keyword tag and contain the words found within it. Each page within your website should have its own title with the website to help the search engines know what that page is about. Try to use your title phrase several times within the content of your website.

Important Notes To Remember

*Keep in mind, meta tags are not the only or even the best method to increase your search engine ranking. Meta tags are simply one of several steps you can take to ensure that your website is covering all possible avenues for search engine optimization.

*Repetition of keywords in your meta tags does not help you. In fact, it will most likely hurt your ranking and possibly get your website blacklisted.

*Try to focus on one or two particular keywords per page within your website rather than trying to include dozens of ideas. This will greatly increase the likelihood that an individual page will appear in the search engine for that focused idea.