Need info on META tags...

N

nralife

New member
I usually spend most of my time at TFL on the legal and political forum. Better late than never, I have discovered that this forum has a wealth of talented and creative people on it as well, so I know someone will be able to help me. :)

I have a couple of websites that I would like to use META tags on to help bring more traffic to them. There are just far too many search engines to try to register my sites on all of them one at a time. I'm thinking that using META tags is the way to go.

Does anyone know of a website that will teach me the correct way to use META tags? I have no problems using HTML, it's just that I don't know beans about META tags.

How about it gang?

Thanks,
Joe
http://second.amendment.homepage.com
 
Here ya go...this is specific for a site I do, so modify as you wish. This one pertains to custom made knives. Note that this goes after the header as seen in the HTML code. And you modify after "content"

</HEAD>
<meta name="Description" content="Simonich
Custom Knives, handmade and custom knives">
<meta name="Keywords" content="Rob
Simonich, custom knives, handmade knives,
exotic materials, Talonite ">
<meta name="Author" content="Dona Cicci and
Rob Simonich">
<meta name="Rating" content="General">


------------------
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" RKBA!



[This message has been edited by DC (edited April 29, 2000).]
 
META tags are just "custom"" variables. You can call them what you like. To insert keywords, you'd use:

<META content="keyword1, keyword2, keyword3, ..." name=keywords>

This is in the HEAD. The double quotes are required.


[This message has been edited by Dennis Olson (edited April 29, 2000).]
 
If you use Meta tags, you will still have to submit your site to search engines. Some will find you anyway, others (dogpile, ask Jeeves) use the databases on the big 8, so registering with the big 8 will suffice.

The keywords Meta tag is used by some, but not all, search engines to determine how your site will be matched to certain search criteria. In the keyword Meta tag you want to list all keywords which, if entered into a search engine, should cause your site to be included in the list of relevant sites. The Description Meta tag will be used by some, but not all, search engines as your site description rather than using the first line of you web page. Use the format that DC and Dennis showed you.

After you add Meta tags, you will want to re-submit your site to the big 8. You ranking should improve on most of them. Yahoo is an exception, it doesn't list sites by relevance.

The big 8 are:
AltaVista
Magellan
Exite
Yahoo!
Infoseek
Lycos
HotBot
Web Crawler

I will register a site with these search engines and let the rest of them come and find me.
 
I learned a lot from Laura LeMay's book 'Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML 4 in 14 Days' (look for the most recent edition), and 'HTML for Dummies' (I think I got the quick reference, but I find all the 'Dummies' books pretty helpful.)

I think you'll find that a small investment in a book or two will also help greatly. Good luck.

Regards from AZ
 
I am just starting to get my web page up to par myself, and have found webmonkey to be an invaluable resource. I think you will find most of the information you need to know there.

Hope that helps.
 
Hey, thanks everybody!

You were all a lot of help. The webmonkey website said to put the meta tags between the </title> and the </head> tags, but the site optimizer service at http://www.proboost.com/ said it wasn't working that way. After I did it DC's way, everything was working fine. :)

I put the meta tags on my sites and listed the sites with all 8 of the search engines that sbryce gave me. Is there anything else that I can do or should do to get more traffic, that is without spending any money. ;-)

A while back I ordered the book "HTML For Dummies" from AOL, but they sent me "Making Web Pages For Dummies" instead. Go figure!

Thanks again,
Joe


http://second.amendment.homepage.com/
 
A cuople of things you don't often hear about META tags:
The entire tag cannot be over 255 characters, spaces included (even the ones BEHIND the first '<'. Most of the time you just hear '25 words or less'.
Each tag MUST be in one contiguous line. If you have a line break of any kind, the search engine will ignore it, or worse, ignore the whole site.
I just got done reading up on them again last night, because a month after submitting my site to all the majors, it still does not show up under a search. :(
So today I get to redo all the tags on 35+ pages.
sm2cents.gif
--- JeepBear Out ---
http://www.freespeech.org/rkba
Carpe Diem. Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum.

[This message has been edited by JeepBear (edited May 01, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by JeepBear (edited May 01, 2000).]
 
Another tip is to use names in your page title that match the keywords, ( can't be more then 64 characters though ) ex:

<title>custom knives, handmade cutlery</title>
<meta name="keywords"
content="custom knives, handmade cutlery">

Also if you repeat words in the keywords list like "knives" more then once or twice the search engine will pentalize you.

Here is a handy link that will check your meta tags: http://www.gldev.com/tools/meta.cgi

Also register with dmoz,I have about 10 to 15 search engines that have indexed me from dmoz - http://www.dmoz.org , a lot of search engines search dmoz & add the sites to their databases.

edit added meta check that worked better.



[This message has been edited by scud (edited May 01, 2000).]
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top