META Tag Hints

In the past, META tags were used by search engines to identify the relevancy of a website by putting weight on particular keywords depending on how they are specified. While some search engines still employ this method, most have resorted to other ways of identifying a website's content due to the various ways that META tags are used to spam the search engines. Leaders in the industry such as Google have chosen to ignore keywords contained in the META tags altogether and instead analyze the actual content of each website including title and header tags.

Although META tags have lost much of their significance, it is still important for your site to be optimized for every search engine as you don't want to lose any potential traffic to your site. There are a couple of META tag hints that are worth knowing pertaining to the two most important tags: keyword and description.

Keyword META Tag
A good rule of thumb is to list keywords that are used throughout your site as well as a few variations of those keywords. Priority is given to the first few words in your description, so focus on your main keywords first and then elaborate further by using synonyms or other related words. Also, including common mis-spellings of a product name or service will allow surfers to find your site if they don't know the exact spelling.

When specifying keywords, keep in mind that listing a particular keyword numerous times won't necessarily help you get a better rank in the search engine results pages; in fact, it could get your site blacklisted. More and more search engines penalize rankings for attempting to abuse their system and excessive repetition of keywords is one of many spamming techniques used by webmasters.

General Usage: < META name="keywords" content="kwd1, kwd2, kwd3">

Description META Tag
Some search engines that support META tags use the description tag when displaying websites in the results pages along with each website's title; the goal of the description tag should be to grab the readers' attention when they see your site displayed among these results. Because of the limited space the search engines provide when listing their results, the first few words of your description should capture your users with the rest of the description tag used to further elaborate. It's difficult enough to get a good ranking; give your website the boost it needs to get more traffic.

General Usage: < META name="description" content="Your description" >

With the use of these META tag hints, you'll be sure to make the most of your tags. If done correctly, not only do they help get better rankings for your site, they also make the listings more appealing to its viewers.