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THE WRITTEN WORD - Columns
What Are "Meta Tags?'
Meta tags are "hidden" words that reside at the top
of your web pages. The search engine spiders that crawl web pages
can "see" these tags and use them to assist in cataloging
your site properly.
Meta tags contain at least two types of information. The first
is the meta description tag and this controls the description
that appears for a web page in search engine listing.
For example, if you go to www.yahoo.com and search for, "Titanic"
you will receive a list of web pages that have relevancy to the
word, "Titanic." The description given for each site
is determined by the meta description if you have included it
on your page.
As you can see, the description allows potential visitors
to receive a glimpse of what your site is all about.
The second type of meta tag is used for keywords. Again, these
words are seen by the spiders that visit pages. Keywords allow
you to associate words and phrases with a web page, to assist
in determining relevancy.
In our example of a web page devoted to a discussion of the
Titanic, suggested keywords would include: Titanic, shipwreck,
ocean liner, iceberg etc. I use the analogy of the card catalog
at the library to help people determine keywords for their sites.
I ask them to pretend they are at the library and are trying
to find information in the subject card catalog for the Titanic.
Since most major search engines support meta tags, they should
be included on all of your web pages. The manner in which meta
tags are composed is very important and should be discussed thoroughly
with your web site designer.
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