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Getting Indexed
Here then are the tags on this page, which you can also see by simply viewing the source of this webpage with your browser.
</head>
The Character set is important as it tells browsers how all text should be shown. The Content-Language tags can also further qualify (limit) the document's geographical relevance by adding a dialect descriptor in the form "en-US" (an American page). The title is most important and can be up to 60-69 characters long. Since it is also used as a Bookmark title it is very important that it be short and very descriptive!
Description is the sentence that could normally appear in your sites search listing, but most search engines will ignore it!
It should be between 100 and 200 (150)characters maximum. If longer, it not only won't show up, but may actually be considered spam. When it gets ignored by a search engine robot or spider, the first couple dozen words of your pages visible text, or text links, will end up showing as the summary of your
page! This is a problem that must be handled by using table tricks or ugly text pages! The Abstract is an alternate
name for the same tag, added for compatibility, and you may also use a <-- hidden comment --> tag for this and other purposes. Hidden comments are supposed to be both hidden and ignored but this is apparently not the case with some search engines!
Keywords list the types of search results listings you want your page to show up in. Since each engine is different and they also change the rules now and then you just have to play it by ear. Generally
don't repeat a word more than 3 times (including derivatives), do use foreign translations of words and synonyms, and try to keep to words that appear in your title, description, text or location of the page itself! Some search engines are case sensitive, but few people search for things in ALL CAPS.
You should not go over 500-1000 (700)characters, use common words etc. You can also use whole phrases,
separated by commas, but this is rather wasteful. The number of words, composition and relationships of titles, descriptions and keywords is important. Some standards call for no more than 256 words, while others specify no more than twenty "phrases" no more than four words long, or 80 words separated by commas. Thus (550-650 characters) seems to be the most reasonable size, and safe setting. Needless to say, excess will be ignored,
and repeating them or using useless words like the, and, or etc. in phrases is a bit pointless. Commas and spaces waste space. If you mix phrases and single keywords, you'll either have to use commas for - and place all the phrases first, or you'll need to use commas instead of spaces between each single keyword and keyphrase.
Most other tags can be no longer than 256 characters in total length (self included), keywords are the exception to this rule where up to 1024 may be acceptable - but you could also get penalized - there's no way of predicting it.
Revisit suggests to some bots how often to call. Object type describes the nature of the document and it's main key terms, acording to the VW96 schema - a standard that contains basic sorts of webpage types and then let's you add topical keywords that further focus on it's particular relevance.
Distribution can be set to 'local', if it only pertains to local (geographic-country) concerns, or 'private' if the page is not for public use. You may also add a rating tag, <META NAME="rating" CONTENT="general"> but these tags are not well-supported.
Robots instructs robots if you would like the page added to the 'index' (or not -noindex), 'archive' (or noarchive) allows copies of your pages to be saved on their server and supplied as 'snapshots' of you page if they provide this service to their clients- and 'follow' indicates whether you'd like links on this page followed for further indexing (can be nofollow). You can also just put 'none' meaning 'ignore this page and everything it links to' or 'all' (do anything you want) in the robots description. This is a secondary, page by page method of controlling this, you should also publish a robots.txt file for your whole site that will offer more detailed robot control instructions.
Certain engines also recognize the 'noimageclick' and 'noimageindex' tags which prevent
images from being linked to directly, or added to search engine indexes.
The MS Smart Tags addresses a new problem where the fools at Redmond added a new kludge to WindowsXP that defaces web pages by automatically inserting links to advertisers websites where and whenever it notices the page contains a certain keyword. This is needed to turn that off.
The meanings of 'spam' vary considerably, and apply to lots of odd things, so be careful! Generally, keywords or pages are considered spam
if they don't contain or lead to exactly what they say they do! Using the same set of keywords for all of your pages is not a good idea! It
is also very bad to use "popular" words that have nothing to do with your site, just to get traffic! You can be banned from a search engine
for doing this.
Many novel spam tricks work, but they are frowned upon by search engines. Here are some other ones that may and do also work with
certain engines, but are really hated by search engine administrators who may ban your site if you are caught using them:
There is an inherent conflict here, as you may not wish visitors be directed to individual pages without entering your site's front door,
yet not have as much indexable information on that front page! One can only hope that the search engines follow the robots instructions you
add to your site, and why you should not send robots machine readable content by stealth is highly disputable! Since search engines are
incapable of intelligently indexing most content, it's the webmasters responsibility to ensure that they recieve the proper content cues so that
the page shows up in the proper sorts of results. This is no different than using a robots.txt file to preclude certain robots from indexing certain
content in certain ways, and if used properly is of far greater benefit to all concerned!
Search engines must begin to see a responsibility towards randomizing their results to prevent spam, and to give equal opportunity to sites
they have already indexed with questionable results. Nonsense-matching is and will always be a very inexact science, and the engines
themselves are responsible for not asking for further qualification when a searcher asks for a mundane, ubiquitous search term, (like 'cranes') instead of just foolishly spitting out millions of useless, conflicting 'results'.
In general, where tags are concerned, less is more! Where page content is concerned, the more words (text) there are and the closer they are to the beginning of the document, the better! The path taken to a document and it's document name are also good resources to play with as in the URL of this page (/guide-web-design-tips-tutorial-help/submit3.htm)
Other Help
You will really value the assistance at Meta Medic.
Submit any page with meta tags on it, and Meta Medic will check the tags for you for free. It's an great resource that gives you some advice
about length and warns you of any problems the tags or page head may have. You have to have the reasonably correct meta tags already correctly
placed between <head> and </head> tags for it to work! Use our Free Meta Tag Generators
to create yourself the tags you need!
You may also want to check out the information at Search
Engine Watch Features For Webmasters to find out more! Ideally, keywords should be ordered or picked differently for each different page
on your site so they relate to each pages content. Some search engines still do not recognize them at all, so consider the other basic page
writing recommendations as well, like lots of text and ugly header tags.
Once you have the bulk of the text portions of your site ready and uploaded, and have decided how you want your tags arranged you are ready to
reveal your creation to the world's search engines - do not submit your pages before you have considered these things!
Here they are! Webdisplays Free Meta Tag Generators...
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