How To Use Meta Tags

Before we start, let's make it clear:

Meta tags are not a magic solution.
Meta tags are not a magic solution.
Meta tags are not a magic solution.

Meta tags provide a useful way to control your summary in some search engines. The search engines that support meta tags can be found on the Search Engine Features page.

Meta tags can also help you provide keywords and descriptions on pages that for various reasons lack text. Examples are splash pages and frames pages. They might also boost your page's relevancy. However, simply including a meta tag is not a guarantee that your page should suddenly leap to the top of every search engine listing. They are a useful tool but, as said above, not a magic solution.

There are several meta tags, but the most important for search engine indexing are the description and keywords tags. The description tag returns a description of the page in place of the summary the search engine would ordinarily create. The keywords tag provides keywords for the search engine to associate with your page.

Before getting into further specifics, let's assume you have a page without the tags. The page is titled "My World," with a header that says "Welcome to My World," then a giant graphic image, then a link at the bottom that says "enter." (Did I mention I hate your page?). Search engines that index this daring creation will probably return a listing like this:

My World
Welcome to My World

Now let's fix it. Let's assume that within "My World" is a site chock full of information about stamp collecting. Here visitors can find out about stamp prices, stamp conventions, stamps for sale and trade, the history of stamps and much more. We'll use the meta tags to communicate this without destroying the image you've worked so hard (ahem) to create. The meta tags go inside the header tags, so that everything looks like this:

<HEAD>
<TITLE>My World</TITLE>
<META name="description" content="Everything you wanted to know about stamps, from prices to history.">
<META name="keywords" content="stamps, stamp collecting, stamp history, prices, stamps for sale">
</HEAD>

Now your listing will look something like this in search engines that support the descriptions tag:

My World
Everything you wanted to know about stamps, from prices to history.

Notice how the description matches what's in the description tag? That's exactly what the meta description tag does. It lets you control the description that appears.

What about the meta keywords tag? It gives your page a chance to come up if someone types in any of the words listed. For example, someone might enter "stamp collecting," which will match with one of the keywords in the tag. Without that tag, there would be no chance at all, since "stamp collecting" doesn't appear on the page or in the description tag.

Should you have different variations for keywords, such as shown in the example? It may help you with some search engines and not at all with others.

Having "stamp collecting" together as a word vs. "stamp" and "collecting" can help if someone is searching for the exact phrase "stamp collecting." In general, try not to worry about it too much. You'll drive yourself crazy trying to cover which engines understand plural forms as a default choice vs. those without a thesaurus vs. those that do phrase searching as a default setting. Still with me?

Remember, you are using these tags to help make up for the lack of text on your pages, not as a way to successfully anticipate every keyword variation a person might enter into a search engine. The only hope you have of ever doing that is to have good, descriptive pages with good titles and text that is not buried on the bottom of the page by JavaScript, frames tags or tables. The meta tags are a tool to get around these aforementioned problems.

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. The format is like this:

Not all search engines support this tag. As an alternative, all the major search engines support the robots.txt convention of blocking indexing.

Definitely add meta description and meta keyword tags to your web pages. Some search engines will give you a boost if you have them. But don't expect that to necessarily be enough to put you in the top ten. Meta tags are mainly a design element you can tap into, a crutch for helping information-poor pages better be acknowledged by the search engines.

The search engines that support meta tags are listed on the Search Engines Features page. More extensive information about meta tags, including specifics for particular search engines and strategies about writing them is also available to site subscribers. Visit the subscription information page to learn more about becoming a subscriber.

Meta Tag Tutorials

Back to Basics: META Tags
WebDeveloper, Nov. 1998
http://www.webdeveloper.com/categories/html/html_metatags.html

Excellent overview of all sorts of important meta tags.

A Dictionary of HTML META Tags
http://vancouver-webpages.com/META/

Virtually every meta tag you may have seen or can imagine is described here, well beyond just the keywords and description tags.

Dr Clue's HTML Guide - Meta Tags
http://www.drclue.net/F1.cgi/HTML/META/META.html

A short tutorial to some of the many meta tags that are available in addition to the keywords and description tags. It includes the Meta-Maker at the end.

WDVL's META Tagging for Search Engines
http://www.stars.com/Search/Meta/Tag.html

Examples of meta tagging for search engines and general information from WDVL

Meta Tag Builders and Evaluators

Meta Medic
http://www.northernwebs.com/set/setsimjr.html

Submit any page with meta tags on it, and Meta Medic will check to see if the tags are valid. It will also offer advice about length and warn of possible problems it believes the tags may have.

AAA Internet Promotion's Meta-Tag Generator
http://www.websitepromote.com/resources/meta/

Enter a page title, up to 5 keywords and a 60 word description, and Meta-Tag Generator will e-mail code that you can cut-and-paste into your web page. Note that it will place a commented credit line into the tag. This can easily be removed, if you wish.

WebPromote's Meta-Tag Generator
http://metatag.webpromote.com/

As above, enter a page title, keywords and a description, and you'll be e-mailed a meta tag incorporated into your page code. Nice pop-up help box provides some meta tag tips. The commented credit line can be removed, if you wish.

Meta Tag Builder
http://vancouver-webpages.com/Vwbot/mk-metas.html

This form allows you to create very complicated meta tags using much more than the keywords and description tags, if you wish. Note that it will place a commented credit line into the tag. This can easily be removed, if you wish.

SiteUp's Meta-Tag Generator
http://www.siteup.com/meta.html

Unlike the services above, this is a software-based package for Windows 95 that creates meta tags. It is a freeware package -- no registration fee required.

Fireball Meta-Tag-Generator
http://www.fireball.de/metagenerator.html

Fireball is one of Germany's largest search engines. This generator makes comprehensive tags to work with the service, and others. Instruction are in German. Mit diesem Formular k�nnen Sie Metainformationen f�r Ihre Webseite erstellen, die dann von Fireball und anderes ausgewertet werden.

Articles About Meta Tags

GeoCities Gains Custom Meta Tags
The Search Engine Report, Feb. 2, 1999
http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/9902-geotags.html

Explains how new meta tags help GeoCities members be found within the GeoCities site.

The New Meta Tags Are Coming -- Or Are They?
The Search Engine Report, Dec. 4, 1997

The proposed Resource Description Framework, or RDF, would provide a new way of describing web pages via meta data. There are high hopes for what it may accomplish, but support by the search engines isn't certain. Also learn more about the Dublin Core meta tags, which may be incorporated into the system.

What Is Meta Content Framework
Search Engine Watch, June 1997

Summary of a Netscape-backed meta data proposal now outdated by the rise of RDF (see above).

Meta Tag Lawsuits

Page within Search Engine Watch that summarizes major lawsuits involving meta tags.

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