What are meta tags ?
Meta tags are hidden HTML tags used to describe various aspects about a Web page. The most important tags are the meta description and meta keywords tags. Let's take a closer look at each Meta tags.
Sample Meta Tags:
Meta description tags
The contents of meta description tags are indexed by some search engines as the page description in its search engine result.
However, meta description tags is often misused, with misleading or even false descriptions about a page. As a result, the relevancy of search results are often compromised, so search engines have begun to de-emphasize the importance and even totally ignore the contents of the tag.
Some Search engines such as ALTA VISTA and INKTOMI, do still index the contents of meta description tags for its search result. But if the Meta description is missing, the search engine will usually extract a description from the body text.
In general , search engines will index the first 135-249 characters of meta description tag contents. Write a description that sells the page.
Include the most important keywords at the beginning of the tag. But. don't just fill the description tag with keywords.
Meta keywords tags
The contents of a meta keyword tag is used to define the important keywords of a page. It sounds good in theory. However in practise, the meta keywords tags is often misused, including the addition of excessive or irrlevent keywords, So much so, that most, but not all, search engines ignore the contents of meta keywords tags.
INKTOMI is the only search engines that indexes the meta keywords tags. Since INKTOMI provides the search result for top search engines such as MSN, hotbot, and Overture, it's probably worth the effort to include the meta keywords tag in your web-pages.
If you decide to use the Meta keywords tag, it suggest that you only include the most important keyword phrase in the content of the tag. The meta keywaord tag should be placed just after the meta description tag.
Should you separate keywords with commas ?
This is a question that has come up with a lot.
Some Search engines Optimizers recommend leaving out the commas, so that it creates more keyword combination for the search engine to index.
I am actually testing both techniques at the moment to see which, if any helps improve rankings in search engines that still indexes the tag.
I have yet to see conclusive proof that one technique is better than the other. So I can't recommend one or the other. i suggest you to try both techniques to see if which, if any produces better result.
To be continued
