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Keyphrase Research and Selection Report Metatag Website Analysis & Competitor Analysis     Optimisation of Metatags for Search Engines   Keyword Analysis: Training Service         Contact Us with Your Requirements            Webpage Metatag Keywords   Introduction - on this page we will explain what Metatag keywords do, what they look like and how to implement them on a web page.  To do this we will analyse the metatags used on this page (the page you are now reading).      What is a Metatag? -Metatags are designed for search engine robots to collect information about your visit to help them decide what the page is about and how to present a link from search engine results back to your website.  Search bots continue to visit websites on a frequent basis in order to generate almost hourly or daily changes in its rankings, based on the changes in the content of website.  Search engines employ a software spider or 'searchbot', which is a program that visits the web page which takes a copy of the were have website. The spider acts in the same way that the user would do in terms of the information that is available in the user's browser such as Internet Explorer or Mozilla's Firefox. The difference being that a spider can copy or webpage in microseconds whereas a person takes time to load the page in their browser and understand the information there looking at. When the software crawler hits the page it lands on, it tries to follow all the available links from the webpage to other web pages (whether they be on the same website or offsite websites). The results are stored by the search engine off line in their own database in large Data Centres for analysis. The spider analyses all available HTML elements of the page such as the header, it's metatags, of the body of the page including all text, images and links.  Sites that are visited most often (and given high rankings) are older established sites that provide continual live content feeds, and that are linked to by thousands of other websites. What is a Metatag Keyword? - a metatag keyword is a hidden HTML element which helps to describe the contents of a web page. Engines use snippets of information to present a listing in the results to users. This is a mandatory first step for webmasters when designing a web page. Without a Metatag your webpage will not rank is highly as it potentially could have done. Historically, metatags were an important element of search engine optimization. However, today's search engine algorithms concentrate more on content and popularity of site across the net. Metatags are only really useful to search bots create of snippets of information for their listings. Different engines apply different importance to Metatags. For instance Google has stated it ignores the Metatag keywords as a ranking factor.  Never 'stuff' you targeted key words in the Metatag section at search engines to view this as a form of spanning and will act appropriately by banning your site. The golden rule is that your Metatags should help the user understand your webpage. Where Are Metatags - Metatags are located within the header section of a website. If you're using Internet explorer visit the top menu click on View, then select 'view source' which all normally out but no pad to reveal all the HTML of the web page you're looking at. Types of Metatags - there are a large number of Metatags available for webmasters to insert information which robots can collect. Some are more important than others and not all of them are mandatory. It is prudent to provide at least the 'metatitle', and Instructions regarding whether or not you want robots to Cache and /or Follow any links on the web page to other internal pages on your site or external links. Meta Title - the most important Metatag is the metatitle looks like this: <title>Your metatitle here</title>. The metatitle must contain your primary keyphrase, ideally as the first word or phrase at the beginning of the metatitle. The metatitle should be No more than about 6 to 8 words or about 150 characters so you must plan your metatitle very carefully and deliberately. Do not repeat your primary keyphrase and try not to use the same word twice anywhere in your metatitle as this is automatically deemed to be unnecessary over optimisation. Never use other people's company names, brands or trademarks unless you been authorized to do so. The metatitle must also be meaningful, relevant and compelling what to your prospect customers i.e users Of search engines (are not just designed have as an optimized element of web page). If you're not sure what to write, type in your primary keyphrase into search engine to view what your competitors have produced as their Metatags for their web pages. To find out more about metatags please click here. Try not to copy them exactly that you can get a good idea of a works and what does not work. An ideal metatitle start to your primary keyphrase and naturally follows into a short description of what the web page is about. Never insert a metatitle that bears no resemblance to the textual content of the web page. Meta Description - or the Meta description (a tag summarising to the content of which the web page is presenting). It may or may not be used by engines as a snippet of information in the search engine listing. It is critical in helping use understand within a few second what the web pages about what. Of therefore it must be highly compelling and inviting for the prospect. We have just like the Meta title, the Metatag rubbish and must also contain your targeted keyphrase and should be directly related to the content of the page. If you have identified secondary key phrases make sure these appear also in the description appearing by order of importance. Do not use the same methods Gretchen on all web pages of your web site, make sure that each page has its own individual description to differentiate it from other web pages. Meta Keywords - Meta keywords can also be used to help search engines qualify the textual content of the page. There are less important but still worth having in the header section. Your primary keyphrase should appear as the first meta keyword then separated by commas the other keywords or phrases. Use exact phrase match. Never repeat any words twice anywhere in the keywords and limit it to about 10 keyphrase is per page. NOODP - If you do not want Google and MSN to apply your Open Directory Project description in their search results, you can use the "No ODP" tag. ROBOTS Metatag - the 'ROBOTS' metatag provides critical instructions for search bots. You can instruct search bots such as Googlebot to take a copy of the page by simply adding the INDEX instruction. If you change this to NOINDEX, then you are instructing bots NOT to copy the page and NOT include it in the search engine. This is just as relevant to webmasters who may manage large websites with hundreds of pages with similar content (that is not relevant search engines but maybe relevant to user browsing). Therefore, to avoid duplicate content penalties, the use of NOINDEX is ideal.   Conversely a spammer would try and insert as many doorway pages (using extremely similar content or a web page strictly used for optimizing a specific keyword or term in order to achieve high rankings in search engines) and would want every page cached. Search engine bots don't like wasting time and bandwidth caching irrelevant content that does not help its user base. For your site, by instructing search bots not to cache a page, you demonstrating it is not relevant to search engine listings, and that you are building pages responsibly.. Metatags Example - the following shows the metatags we used on this page.  <html> <head> <TITLE>Compiling Metatag Keywords Basics - Create an Optimized Webpage</TITLE> <META NAME="Title" CONTENT="Compiling Metatag Keywords Basics - Create an Optimized Webpage"> <META NAME="description" CONTENT="Compiling Metatag Keyword"> <META NAME="Abstract" CONTENT="Compiling Metatag Keywords Basics - Create an Optimized Webpage"> <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="online marketing, pay per click, website hosting"> <META NAME="Submission" CONTENT="http://www.intelligentmarketing.org.uk"> <META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Compiling Metatag Keywords Basics"> <META NAME="Subject" CONTENT="Metatag Keywords"> <META NAME="Copyright" CONTENT="Copyright © http://www.intelligentmarketing.org.uk"> <META NAME="Submission" CONTENT="http://www.intelligentmarketing.org.uk"> <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="INDEX, FOLLOW"> <META NAME="REVISIT-AFTER" CONTENT="2 Days"> <META NAME="document-classification" CONTENT="Business and Economy"> <META NAME="document-rating" CONTENT="General"> <META NAME="document-distribution" CONTENT="Global"> <meta name="ROBOTS"content="NOYDIR" /> <meta name="ROBOTS"content="NOODP" /> </head> <body>         back to top Copyright IntelligentMarketing.org.uk 2008