Meta Tags Explained For Real Dummies

6/16/2012
Hello world. What are meta tags? Why do I come through a lot of this meta tag thingies while browsing the web? Well, these questions is always in the mind of normal people. But for the geeks in the internet world its pure magic.

Meta tags is actually added to a webpage to make it more visible and recognisable for search engine, e.g. Google etc. Imagine finding a needle through a hay stack. Tough right. That's how search engine find stuff if you enter a certain keyword or phrase in your web browsers. So, meta tags comes as an option for the robot crawlers to fetch and feed to Google's search engine and portray the list of your required keyword or phrase.

Meta tags for a web page, basically consists of 3 key components which is the title, the description and the keyword. It is normally displayed on top of any web pages on your browser window just like a title for a certain document. The meta description is not shown publicly on web browsers but it will be portrayed on your a search engine results. For a meta description, it does not refer to the original content of a certain page. For instance if your page has a lot of images, this is where the meta description is used to explain about the page, using word referencing its contents to search engines. These tags is usually placed or under the header tags of that page and it should be unique so every page of your website or blog will be different.

Meta tags explained for real Dummies


How do we know which unique words suitable for our web pages? This is the game we play here in the internet world. Search Engine Optimization SEO - that extra edge for your web pages or websites. Since search engine robots fetch these meta tags more clearly, it is best practice to provide a different set of keywords for each page. To get these keywords, there are simple tool by Google dubbed Google Adword. The tool has many improved features which will help you guide through in finding the right keywords for your web pages. It will also allows you to see keyword based on your competition, which when optimised correctly, your web pages will be front listed in search engines.

For title description, it should be written properly so it will be easier for your future web visitors to browse through and get interested in your web pages. As an option, when search engine can not find any related keywords in your web pages, these robots will fetch the meta title description of your web pages. So in another way, it is important to optimise your keywords and meta descriptions to be ahead of your competitors web pages.

One thing that I've just learned through reading in the internet, the best arrangement for your keywords is to use low competition keywords. You should not use mis-spelled keywords because these robots knows you are trying to manipulate your keywords. There are also write up on penalised web pages due to manipulation of keyword. But what ever it is, just do not mis spelled on your keywords when optimising your websites. In addition, keyword phrase you have written for your web pages, must be meaningful and understandable, if not, these robots will consider your page as a spamming. That does not look good.

Anyway, get the best practice to optimise your websites and blogs for top notched search engine results. My word of advise, try not to show so much of a mistakes like keyword error, mis-spelled words because tentatively, to your future visitor's, it will probably make your website/blog unprofessional.
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