Why & How To create Meta Tags   

by: John Overall

Here it is today’s piece of interesting advice.

I have been hearing allot lately about the re-emergence of importance of meta tags for your web pages. This is something that I have said all along remember to use your meta tags it seems that the search engines are using them more and more again.

The most important ones to use are the Title and the Description Tags. It seems that many search engines are using the Title Tag as the main line and sometimes but not always they use the Description Tag as the description for the site. I have found that they are using the alt tags from some of my graphics in the description.

A good example I have is when I do a search for my site in Google I get the following:(Smart Bomb Enterprises Web Design) this is the Title they used and came from my Title tag
(Creators of affordable Award Winning web and graphic design we produce quality
design guaranteed to please and offer fast cheep quality web hosting. ) this is the description they used and it came from my description tag.
www.smartbomb.ca/ - 37k - 11 Jul 2005 -

Now this one is from MSN Search:
(Smart Bomb Enterprises Web Design) this is what was used as the title and again it came from my title tag.
(... guaranteed to please and offer fast cheep quality web hosting. Smart Bomb Enterprises is now a member of the Better Business Bureau Online Reliability Program Fantastico .) this is what was used for the description and this time they used some from my description tag and they added a couple lines of text from the body of my pages.
www.smartbomb.ca

Now this one is from Yahoo Search:
(Smart Bomb Enterprises Web Design) this is what was used as the title and again it came from my title tag.
(Creators of affordable Award Winning web and graphic design we produce quality design guaranteed to please and offer fast cheep quality web hosting. ... Smart Bomb Enterprises is now a member of the Better Business Bureau Online Reliability Program ... capture and keep their attention. Smart Bomb Enterprises can help you design or ...) this is what was used for the description and this time they used some from my description tag and they added a couple lines of text from the body of my pages.
www.smartbomb.ca

As you can see Meta Tags are important and it would seem that search engines are using them again but in the way they are supposed to be used. Here is a list of tags I recommend be used and how to write them.

<title>Smart Bomb Enterprises Web Design</title> Make sure to use a unique title on every page if possible.

<link rel="SHORTCUT ICON" href="/Favicon.ico"> Use this if you have a favicon for your site.  (note for those who may not know on a unix system it will reconize Favicon.ico and favicon.ico a completly seperate files, something many people forget since we are so used to Microsofts operating systems.)

<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="true"> Use this to stop the MS Smart Tags on your site.

<meta name="description" content="Creators of affordable Award Winning web and graphic design we produce quality design guaranteed to please and offer fast cheep quality web hosting." /> This is the description make it no longer than about 250 char.

<meta name="language" content="English" /> To set a specific language for your site.

<meta name="author" content="John Overall Smart Bomb Enterprises web and graphic design" /> You may or may not want this one.

<meta name="copyright" content="Smart Bomb Enterprises 2003-2004 web and graphic design" /> This one is obvious.

<meta name="robots" content="INDEX, FOLLOW" /> Use this to tell the robots where to go and what to do in your site.

<meta name="revisit-after" content="5 days" /> tell the robots how often to come back I have it set for 5 days to allow some breathing room. I have noticed from my logs that the robots seem to obey this.

And there are many more you can choose from here is a dictionary of meta tags that will help you out.

I hope you learned something from this article.If you have some queries on any topic related to this please let me know at dragon@smartbomb.ca.i would try my best to answer you.

About The Author John has a diploma in Applied Communication from Camosun College. He is also the founder of www.smartbomb.ca & www.smartbombhost.com His educational background is in the area of graphic design, web design & hosting. dragon@smartbomb.ca Permission is granted to reprint & reposte this article provided all links remain intact.

This article was posted on July 13, 2005

 

Back to main Articles page