What are Meta Tags?

What are meta tags?

At webwildcatting.com we get this question a lot from our clients. Here is a simple answer to this question. We have a great 25 step tool to help any website owner organically improve website search engine optimization. Take a look at it here.

Meta tags are little bits of HTML code that provide information about a page but are not viewable by the user in a browser. Most search engines examine a page's meta tags, which usually include a page title, description, and keywords, to index the page and help determine its ranking in relevant search results. Although not the only way to elevate your site's search engine rankings, judiciously adding meta tags to your pages can help.

Title:
Title tags appear at the top of the web browser screen when that page is viewed, and in a visitor's bookmarks menu, if he decides to bookmark your site. More important, search engines use titles to index web sites, and often display them in search engine results.

Description:
Your description summarizes your page's content. Some search engines use this description to help categorize your page, and a few even display it in search results! Make sure you write short good copy here, or hire us to help you.

Keywords:
Though the keywords tag isn't as important as it once was, effective keywords can still influence your search engine rankings. Your visitors won't see your keyword meta tags (which will be hidden in your site code), but search engines may use them to help index your site.

Your page's title, description, and keyword tags generally appear at the top of a web page's HTML code (you can find a page's meta tags by selecting Source or Page Source from your browser's View menu). Here's an example:

** Of note, we replaced < and > with ( and ) for display purposes.

(head)
(title)your business name and page title(title)
(meta name="description" content="a description of your site")
(meta name="keywords" content="relevant keywords about your site")
(/head)

If you found this useful, you'll be able to quick and effectively use our 25 point Search Engine Optimization tool. You will begin to see results in 90 days. Using this process our site is rated Number 1 in Yahoo, Google, and MSN. It takes a little time, and some tweaking, but it works.

Come back soon for more insight from Webwildcatting.