Virtual Assistant Forums | Work from Home

JKVirtualOffice · #1 (**permalink**) 05-29-2008

I've been looking through this section and I've done a search of the forum so as to not post a question that's already been answered. But, I am still having trouble understanding what a meta tag is. I understand that it's important to SEO.

I'm a rather visual, concrete individual so if someone could explain the definition in simple terms and perhaps provide an example of "where" meta tags live on a website, then maybe I'll be able to grasp the concept better. This is one of those things that I feel should be able to get a handle on rather easily, but for some reason am not.

I'm using a website builder to build my website so I'm not writing code and I haven't really found where I can access the code, so I'm hoping that this is not the only way in which meta tags are added to a website.

VagabondetteVA · #2 (**permalink**) 05-29-2008

It's basically a description of the page. Keywords. It's what you want the search engines to think of when they look at your page.

Here is the meta tag from this thread:

<meta name="keywords" content="What is a meta tag?, KEYWORDS GO HERE" />
<meta name="description" content="What is a meta tag? Search Engine Optimization (SEO)" />

It goes right at the top of your page under the <head> tag.

You can see the source of just about any page by right clicking and choosing "view page source". It's a good way to see how others are using their tags.

Tess · #3 (**permalink**) 05-29-2008

Hi Kim, I have some good news and some bad news

The bad news is that yes, you do need to be able to access and edit the code on your website in order to implement meta tags. They go in between the <head> and </head> tags in HTML and that's the only way to get them in there. You'll want to add them to each page, once you know how.

The good news is that meta tags are at this point considered a small aspect of on-site SEO, with the most important elements being on-site content (the text on your page) and relatively keyword density. There are other on-site elements that go into SEO as well but content really is half the battle. Bearing in mind this is all based on my own experience optimizing my own sites and client sites - there are numerous schools of thought on SEO and how it all works - some people may swear by meta tags. We do use them on all sites without exception because every little bit helps.

Meta tags basically help tell the search engines what an individual web page is about. It is a short descriptive that sums up the content of a single page.

The Meta tags for any page would look something like this:

<meta name="title" content="This is the TITLE of your page, it shows up at the tip top of the browser window">

<meta name="keywords" content="these, are, your, keywords, separated, by, commas, don't, list, a, zillion, of them, just, enough">

<meta name="description" content="This is what shows up in the search results for any given page - it is best as a full sentence, clearly referencing the content of that particular page.">

When someone queries Google for something relative to the info in the meta tags and/or content the page may or may not pop up in early search results, depending on how strong any other pages on other domains with similar Meta tags may be - it's more likely to rank higher in search results if the content also includes the same keywords being entered by the querent.

Of all these three tags listed above, the description is the most important, followed by the title. The keywords - not so much. Good descriptions can make a huge difference in how people interact with your result once it does pop up on the page.

For example: search Google for COACH HANDBAGS

Look at and compare the listings on that page for Macy's and eBay:
COACH - Macy's
Coach products at Macys.com. ... SIGNATURE STRIPE HANDBAGS. back to top ... $458.00. COACH ERGO PATENT LEATHER PLEATED FRAME SATCHEL ...

coach, Women's Accessories, Handbags, Women's Shoes items on eBay.com
Buy coach, Women's Accessories, Handbags items on eBay. Find a huge selection of Women's Shoes, Pet Supplies items and get what you want now!

The parts I've highlighted in RED are the 'description' tags. Note that Macy's basically doesn't have any so Google has to fish the content of the page and comes up with a big mess. Ebay's description tags are more carefully installed to inspire people to click through (although, were it my site I'd make them more topic-focused...if I'm shopping for a Coach bag I don't need to see "pet supplies" etc..)

I hope that helps! Let me know if I just confused you more

Tess · #4 (**permalink**) 05-29-2008

One note about the meta tags on this site, that Amanda referenced - they are autogenerated by my software so are based on the title of the thread itself and a few other things I've entered in my admin panel...but for a site this big you have to autogenerate this kind of thing or you'll end up with zillions of pages to optimize by hand.

Also, I edited the post to remove our keywords for reasons I won't bother to explain here, but where it says KEYWORDS GO HERE you'd enter your comma-separated keywords.

#5 (**permalink**) 05-29-2008

The only META tag that people really should worry about is the "Description" tag.

Whatever text you have is the description tag is what shows up in the search engines. Writing a creative and catchy description can increase your click through rate ten fold.

META Keywords has absolutely no impact on SEO anymore as the big 3 search engines don't use them. Saying that, I still use them to cater for the smaller search engines and META crawlers.

Plus it's habit!! but it doesn't matter if the META keywords are inserted or not.

The "Title" is debatable if it is part of the META family or not. W3C say it's not and others say it is. Personally I believe it is a stand alone element and the most important element around at the moment as the Title can influence rankings.

KP

JKVirtualOffice · #6 (**permalink**) 05-29-2008

Thank you everyone. This has been very helpful and I understand it all soooo much better. Your explanations were great.

Codehead · #7 (**permalink**) 05-29-2008

I think everyone answered your question already but I will also add a little description.
Meta tags are elements on HTML documents (web pages) that contain some metadata about the page.

As you probably know metadata means data about data, and in this case, you provide information such as keywords and description about that particular page which is hopefully a page containing some useful data

In terms of SEO Tess & KingPin is correct, major search engines ignore meta keywords completely but your meta description will show up under your SERPs and this is not always true because if search engines find some text that is more relevant to the search term, they show that instead of the description of the page.

I hope this helps

JKVirtualOffice · #8 (**permalink**) 05-29-2008

Thanks, that is also very helpful and gives me the explanation I was looking for. I think I was just confused that meta tags included the description, title and keywords. I also understand better now where they "reside" and more about what their purpose is.

I was able to get the description and the keywords in there but the title part is alluding me. Sigh. I'm not going to obsess about it right now since I mostly just want to get the sight up and running and out there (yet still in some kind of good SEO shape!).

You guys have been great!

#9 (**permalink**) 05-29-2008

Ok, I posted a question about google indexing, metatages, key words, ad sense, etc..in another section before stumbling across this thread.

Also, as the question was already asked...I am still not clear on the website builder. If I am using Yahoo website builder and not actually writing "code" , can I actually utilize this feature.

Tess · #10 (**permalink**) 05-29-2008

It depends on the sitebuilder itself - some have HTML editing windows where you can add this kind of thing, some have actual fields you can fill in (like a form) [I think Microsoft Office Live has these...] and some you can access the code through FTP (like any other website)

I'm not familiar with any of the sitebuilders, honestly so you'll want to check your FAQ or support system for that one. Or, just Google "how to add metatags in Yahoo sitebuilder"

Looks like there is at least one possibly helpful result:
How can I add meta tags to my pages? - Yahoo! Small Business Help