| Optimizing Meta Tags The 'Keyword' meta-tag was initially designed to help search engines categorize web pages based on content. Since their introduction the 'keyword' meta-tag has been the most abused. Early on many sites would repeat the same keywords countless times in the hopes of boosting rankings. In addition to repetition, some sites included keywords which did not have anything to do with the content of the site but rather used keywords of popular search terms at that time. At one point you may have been searching for something relating to a current news story or popular term and adult sites showed up having nothing to do with the search term you used. Because of these techniques, search engines had to alter the way they used keywords in their ranking algorithms. These days, the terms you choose as keywords should appear in your title, description and littered within the content of the page they appear. Having mentioned the above facts, let me note that meta-tags are not the make-or-break solution to obtaining top placement. Some engines do not even consider them important. Regardless, the keyword and description meta-tags are still important for your overall success of optimization. Remember that these meta-tags live within the <head></head> tags of your HTML document. We will now discuss the specifics about the Keyword and Description Meta-tags. Next Page > |
