Search Engines Metalinks & Meta Tags
Meta Tags and Meta Links
It is important to insert essential html coding into your web pages so that search engines understand how to list your website. This extract discusses the importance of Metalinks and Meta Tags towards search engine optimization.
Essential Back Coding of Your Web Pages
Metalinks are that part of the coding behind your web page that tells the automated "Spider" or Search Engine how you would like your Web Page to be registered. Meta Tags is the name they give to the coding we use. As we discussed in website content, we should optimize each page for a maximum of 3 keywords or phrases only!
If you are a beginner to coding, you can view the coding of this webpage as an example.
Right Mouse Click on this web page and then click View Source. A new page should open up in your notepad (or another text reader). At the top you should be able to see the meta tags coding that looks something like the following:
1. <title>Metalinks Meta Tags. Coding your website.</title>
2. <META NAME="description" CONTENT="Metalinks, Meta Tags and SEO. Simply The Best At Internet Marketing. Free Program. ">
3. <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="metalinks, meta tags, META tags, meta links, links, search engines, search engine optimization, website, techniques, marketing, internet, simply the best, free, internet marketing, training, education">
4. <meta name="Robots" content="follow, index">
5. <meta name="rating" content="general">
6. <META NAME="author" CONTENT="Madam Splash">
7. <META name="copyright" content="Madam Splash 2006 (c)">
8. <meta name="distribution" content='global'>
9. <META NAME="expires" CONTENT="never, 0">
10. <META NAME="language" CONTENT="english">
11. <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-language" CONTENT="en-US">
12. <META NAME="revisit-after" CONTENT="7 Days">
13. <META NAME="email" CONTENT="
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
">
14. <META NAME="publisher" CONTENT="Splash Marketing Australia">
The words highlighted in red identify the different types of META tags or record. There are more meta tags available but these are the bare minimum that we recommend be included in your pages. This website is designed through a Joomla Content Management System, so at times we are limited to the parameters provided.
<title> ~ Priority No 1. - without a title, you will not be listed on any Search Engine. Use an optimum of 6 to 12 words, and ensure that your keywords fall between 20-35% ratio of your title. Some Search Engines will use the title as an advertised summary of your page. Only use a keyword once!
[Recommended 55 Characters Maximum]
"description" ~ Some search engines use this information as the advertised summary of your web and to determine the keywords for your page, but now as the internet becomes one giant "Feed", this mighty description will become even more important towards Search Engine Optimization. It is recommended to use between 12 words maximum. Do not use a keyword or phrase more than ONCE, ratio does not seem to be as important, but suggest not exceeding 20%.
[Recommended 100 Characters Maximum]
"keywords" ~ Some say that the keywords meta tag is no longer relevant to ranking in major search engines, but they are still used in more primitive directories, so top SEO developers still incorporate them into code, and so do I. Use between 10 to 50 keywords, ideally separated by a comma. Include your keywords and phrases ONCE ONLY. Ensure that keywords and phrases can also be found at least once in your page copy. As mentioned earlier in copy content, make sure main keywords and phrases are 2-4% of your copy i.e. included in your page 4-8 times for each 200 words of copy. [Recommended 360 Characters Maximum]
"robots" ~ or "googlebot" This command is now obsolete and best left off your webpage all together, unless you use it block access to the webpage with the noindex/nofollow commands.
This meta link was used to instruct the search engines to "index" your page and "follow" all links. If you did not want this to happen you would replace these commands with "noindex" and/or "nofollow" instead. It is recommend that a better strategy is to incorporate a robots.txt file which resides in your root directory to instruct search engines on what not to index. You can also use a 301 redirect on a .htaccess page.
The search engines moved away from this system as a result of underhanded web marketers who would create highly cheating websites, then make them invisible to the search engines utilising this command.
"rating" ~ This is the rating of your site, that works a little like television and movie ratings.
As a rule of thumb we only use Safe For Kids for sites that do have a kids site. More commonly used ratings include "General", "Mature" and "Restricted".
"author" ~ This is the person or organisation who has produced the web-page.
"copyright" ~ this identifies any copyright over material and penalties can apply if copied.
"distribution" ~ This identifies if your web page is available for public viewing or internal only.
"expires" ~ If you had an expiry date of a website you would include the following syntax: <META HTTP-EQUIV="expires" CONTENT="Wed, 09 Aug 2000 08:21:57 GMT">
"language" identifies the language of text in your website
"Content-language" denotes the dictionary terminology. It is considered that search engines will drop off websites that have a high level of misspelling. I tend to use the US Version of English Spelling.
"revisit" ~ Tells the Search Engine how often to revisit. It is without a shadow of doubt that Search Engines will list those sites most recently recorded or visited first, and as a revisit to your site is a re-registration, this will maximize your chances of staying at the top. Caution - it is not recommended to re-register your website on less than a weekly basis, unless you make regular changes to your website. [Recommended 7 to 14 days revisit]
"email" ~ is the email contact address for this web page.
"publisher" ~ is the nominated person or organisation whom has published this web page.
For a full list of all Meta Tags available visit the following website for more details and options. http://www.html-reference.com/META.htm
We will now move to the next important topic involved in excellent Search Engine Optimisation the art of linking and hyperlinking.