META Tags And Search Engine Placement For The Novice

By Allan Turner

So, you want to know about META tags and search engine placement, do you? Then, you've come to the right place. You've finally gotten your Web page up and running and it's looking real good. I know that was certainly no small undertaking. So, I want to say, “Congratulations!” But, now you've got a problem. You have noticed that you're not getting anywhere near the visitors that you thought you would. You've even typed your name and some of the subjects on your site into numerous search engines, and so far you're nowhere in sight. If, per chance, you did find anything that had to do with your site, it was so far down in that seemingly endless list of World Wide Web (WWW) addresses that no one but you would be taking the time to find it. Does this all sound familiar? I've been there, so don't be embarrassed.Computer instruction

You've decided that you want to do something about this travesty. Okay, okay..., I know “travesty” is a strong word. Maybe it is no “big deal” to a lot of people, but it's important to you. After all, you have your own address in cyberspace, and you think that getting your message out to the world is quite important. If not, you would never have invested all the time it took for you to get your site up and running. Furthermore, if building your site was just a novelty, you would not be taking the time to read this little tutorial, and your site would just be sitting there, like so many others, doing absolutely nothing. So, you're serious about this, and I know exactly where you're coming from.

You've heard something about how “META tags” help with search engine placement, but as a novice to the WWW and something called “HTML” (Hypertext Markup Language), you just don't know how it all works. (In the beginning of the WWW, this would never have been the case, because, back then, you had to know HTML, which is the formatting language of the Internet, to even put up a Web site. But today, with all the WYSIWYG [What You See Is What You Get] Web site building programs that are out there in the marketplace, many of you know nothing about how HTML works.) I'm a novice also. A little less than a year ago I knew very little about the WWW and HTML. What little I knew was limited to what I had read and heard from others. I had absolutely no “hands on” experience. Does that sound familiar? The fact that I'm also a novice means I'm not going to be talking over your head in either “webeze” or “computereze” jargon. In fact, it's a bit irritating that folks, who I'm pretty sure never even learned how to spell or diagram a sentence properly, are jumping on my case and making me feel like a complete idiot because I don't know what “WRT, TIC, TANSTAAFL, ROTFL, OTOH, JOOTT, FWIW, IANAL, BTW, FYI, IMCO” mean! So, don't worry about this being too technical for you. If you can read English, you will not have any problems with this little tutorial.

Now, go to any search engine and do a query. Go ahead. (Remember: You'll have to click the “Back” button on your browser to get back to this page.) Often hundreds or even thousands of Web pages are presented as possible matches. Now look at the results again. On most search engines, usually only the 10 or 20 most “relevant” matches are displayed on the first page. Most people are never going to see all the other pages that also match, because they are buried somewhere after page one. Instead, they are going to click on one of the matches in the “first 10 or 20,” and away they go. If they don't find what they are looking for, they hit the “Back” button on their browser, which takes them back to their original “first 10 or 20,” they click on another, and away they go again. Consequently, and it doesn't take a mental heavyweight to figure this out, if it is possible for your page to be in the “first 10 or 20,” then the chances a searcher will visit your site are greatly increased. But, if you're listed as number 428, forget it!

I think I know what you're thinking: “Man, if I can have my Web pages show up in the ‘first 10 or 20,’ I'll start getting tons of hits!” Well, not exactly “tons,” because that's a mixed metaphor, but it is certain to increase the traffic to your pages, and that's what you're interested in, isn't it? But, even now, as the euphoria begins to wear off, you may begin to think: “But I'm such a novice at this, and, as such, I'll never be able to compete with all those web pros out there, so why should I even waste my time?” But, my WWW friend, you can compete with the pros, and you can win. I know you can, because I'm doing it! Since I implemented some of these things I'll be sharing with you, I have seen more and more of my pages showing up in the “first 10 or 20.” As I get better at this, I'll share that information with you, but, in the meantime, if you will implement the advice I give you in this tutorial, you should begin to see results in two to four weeks.

What I'd like for you to do right now is look at the META tags for this page. In Netscape Navigator, you do this by clicking the “View” section of your browser and then clicking “Page Source.” In Microsoft Explorer, you click “View” and then “Source.” Go ahead and do it right now. When you've had a look, eliminate this “Source” view by clicking the “X” in the top, right hand corner of your browser.

Welcome back! For all you WYSIWYG folks, you've just seen the true face of the WWW—pure HTML, the formatting language that is the backbone of the cyberspace domain. You saw something at the top part of this page that looked almost like what you see below:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>META Tags and Search Engine Placement for Novices</TITLE>
<META NAME="description" content="An article by Allan Turner on how to use META tags to be better represented in many search engines.">
<META NAME="keywords" content="META tags tutorial, search engines, how to place high in search engines, html for novices, Web page tips, webpage design, allan turner">
<META NAME="author" content="Allan Turner">
</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#F5F5DC" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#800080" ALINK="#FF0000">

<CENTER><H2><FONT COLOR="#0000FF">META Tags And Search Engine Placement For The Novice</FONT></H2></CENTER>
<CENTER><I>By Allan Turner</I></CENTER>
<BLOCKQUOTE>So, you want to know about META tags and search engine placement, do you? Then, you've come to the right place. You've finally gotten your Web page up and running, and it's looking real good. Well, that was certainly no small undertaking. So, I want to say, “Congratulations!” But, you've got a problem. You have noticed that you're not getting anywhere near the visitors that you thought you would. You've even typed your name and some of the subjects on your site into numerous search engines, and so far you're nowhere in sight. If, per chance, you did find anything that had to do with your site, it was so far down in that seemingly endless list of World Wide Web (WWW) addresses that no one but you would be taking the time to find it. Does this all sound familiar? I've been there, so don't be embarrassed.
The only things different from what you see above and what you saw by viewing the previous “Page Source” window is that the Word Wrap function is “On” and different colors are being used in some of the HTML. So, it looks a little different, but hopefully you'll be able to see what I'm talking about as we continue this tutorial. Right now I don't want you to be concerned with anything that appeared in the HTML document except that which is shown above.

Web and spiderIt should be interesting for you to learn that most of what is recorded above is never seen by the regular visitors to your site. Nevertheless, it is this unseen part of the Web page that is most important to being favorably displayed in many of the search engines. Search engines use “spiders,” “crawlers,” “worms,” or “robots” to inventory Web pages. These varmints are looking for certain information so they can categorize and list your Web pages on their search engines. Most of these creepy things read META tags fluently, and they are very appreciative of any information the META tags provide. So there you have it, a little crash course in spiders and worms. I can't tell you anymore about these little critters, because this is all I know. If you want to know more about search engines, then visit Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Watch at http://searchenginewatch.com/.

META Tag Placement

META tags are always found between the <HEAD>.......</HEAD> formatting. But there is something else found between this HTML heading that is very important and often overlooked by novice Webmasters. It's the <TITLE>.......</TITLE> markings that can be seen in the above illustration. One of the very first things the robots visiting your site are going to see is this title. So, you need to make it as descriptive as you can. In other words, this is the starting point for getting your page properly recognized. The title of this page is <TITLE>META Tags and Search Engine Placement for Novices</TITLE>, and it's a pretty good summary of what this page is all about. You really need to make this title as descriptive as possible, so work hard at it. It's impossible to find absolute criteria as to how long this title ought to be, but you should be safe under 60 characters, counting spaces between words.

The next thing the robots are going to do, if they read META tags, and not all of them do, is they're going to read the description provided for them in <META NAME="description" content="An article by Allan Turner on how to use META tags to be better represented in many search engines.">. Notice how I have included the key words in this description that are in the title. This is important. When someone types in META tags or search engine in their search for information, your page has been indexed for those words. Your relevancy to these words increase as the spider/robot reads down your page from top to bottom and finds these key words. Again, the information is spotty on this, but I think it safe to say that the maximum number of characters for the description, including spaces, is 150.

As the spiders continue their crawl down the page, the next thing they are going to see is <META NAME="keywords" content="META tags tutorial, search engines, how to place high in search engines, html for novices, Web page tips, webpage design, allan turner">. Again, you should have the key words you've used in the title and the META tag description listed in these keywords. These keywords can be single or multiple words, but they must always be separated by a comma. Try to think of words or phrases that someone searching for what your page offers might type in their search for information. Actually multiple words are better, as they increase the actual relevancy of your page. Be warned that unscrupulous Webmasters have cheated by repeating a key word many times to artificially increase the relevancy of their pages. That worked for a while, but spiders have now been trained to ignore these efforts, or to refuse to index such pages altogether. So, honesty is the best policy! If you get too cute, you're going to be ignored. Furthermore, think of the searches you've done in the past where all those useless pages have been listed because folks are using keywords that have nothing to do with what they are really offering. So, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and you know who said that, don't you? The recommended maximum number of characters, including spaces, is 874.

Where are these little critters going next? They are probably going to crawl down to <META NAME="author" content="Allan Turner">. This is pretty self-explanatory. In case they haven't gotten it figured out, I'm telling them that Allan Turner authored this page. If, of course, someone is looking for something by Allan Turner, this page should definitely show up in their search.

Well, we have now come to the end of META tags, and that's all there is to it, right? Wrong! The robots immediately drop down to read the several lines of words coming after the <BODY> tag. On the example above, this happens to be the actual title that one sees when viewing this page with a browser, which looks like this:

META Tags And Search Engine Placement For The Novice


In HTML, it's written as <CENTER><H2><FONT COLOR="#0000FF">META Tags And Search Engine Placement For The Novice</FONT></H2></CENTER>. So, once again, the spiders see “META Tags” and “Search Engine Placement,” which is a repeat of the key words, and the relevancy of this page in connection with these key words continues to increase. They will then read <CENTER><I>By Allan Turner</I></CENTER>, which again connects this page with the author. Finally, the robots read the first paragraph of the page, which looks like this:
<BLOCKQUOTE>So, you want to know about META tags and search engine placement, do you? Then, you've come to the right place. You've finally gotten your Web page up and running, and it's looking real good. Well, that was certainly no small undertaking. So, I want to say, “Congratulations!” But, you've got a problem. You have noticed that you're not getting anywhere near the visitors that you thought you would. You've even typed your name and some of the subjects on your site into numerous search engines, and so far you're nowhere in sight. If, per chance, you did find anything that had to do with your site, it was so far down in that seemingly endless list of World Wide Web (WWW) addresses that no one but you would be taking the time to find it. Does this all sound familiar? I've been there, so don't be embarrassed.

It is critical that the first sentence or two contain as many of the key words as possible. It is important for the robots to know that your key words are actually found in the body of the page. This continues to increase the relevancy of the page and hopefully moves your standing in the search index up to the “first 10 or 20.” If not, then you've still increased your chances by moving closer to the “first 10 or 20.” It is interesting to note that fairly recent statistics indicate that only 30% of Web sites use META tags. Therefore, if you'll implement what you've learned in this little tutorial, even though you're a novice, you will be ahead of the vast majority of Webmasters.

Now that you've learned some of the mechanics of META tags and search engine placement, you'll want to get your Web site “up to speed.” When you get this done, you will then be ready to submit your pages to the various search engines. There are many different tutorials on the WWW that will assist you in that procedure. When you're ready, just go to your favorite search engine and type in “submitting to search engines,” and you'll get all the help you need.

A good way to whip your site into shape before submitting it to the search engines is to make it searchable locally. Usually this requires that you have a knowledge of CGI scripts, but with a free service offered by FreeFind, you can actually have your Web site indexed and searchable in under 30 minutes. It is really a fabulous service. To give you an example of what this looks like, just type “feminization” into the search engine listed below. (Remember: After doing this, and viewing the results page, hit your “Back” button on your browser, and it will bring you back to this page.)



Search this site
 
    powered by FreeFind

Welcome back! What you saw was a FreeFind results page that listed the articles on my Web site that mention the word “feminization.” If I haven't added anymore pages since I wrote this, then they were listed as follows:


Wimmin, Wiccans, and Goddess Worship
An examination of radical feminism
URL: http://allanturner.com/ss09.html

What is the Meaning of Life?
Question number Two in a ten question series on developing a biblical worldview
URL: http://allanturner.com/ten_2.html

Radical Feminism
An article dealing with the anti-scripturalness of the radical feminist movement
URL: http://allanturner.com/article12.html

The Battle of the Sexes
An article that deals with the God-ordained roles of male and female
URL: http://allanturner.com/article03.html


Once you get your Web site properly set up in accordance with the things you've learned in this tutorial, this is how your pages may appear in the various search engines honoring META tags. The descriptions appearing under the page titles above were written by me using the “description” META tag explained earlier. As you can see, this can give you some control over how your pages are going to appear in some of the search engines. Also, you can see what a valuable tool a local search is for someone visiting your site. Incidentally, the index above is live, so you can click them and they will take you to the various pages described. If you do that though, remember that you will have to hit your “Back” button to return to this page. If you're interested in FreeFind, and I think you should be, you can visit their site by clicking here. The installation procedure is easy and is explained in detail on the site. A warning: Don't sign up and ask them to spider your Web site until after you have your pages properly set up with titles and META tags, or you will not like the result, which, incidentally, will be what your pages already look like in many of the search indexes.

I hope you've found this little tutorial of some help. Keep in mind that I am not a professional Web designer and I make no profit from anything I have written here, so you cannot hold me liable for any errors or omissions. I know that sounds so irresponsible, but, unfortunately, we live in a very litigious society. Happy indexing, my WWW friend!

If you are so inclined, I have some articles and special studies of a religious nature listed on my home page. You can go there by clicking on “Return home” below.


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