Meta Tags are what all search engines look at in one form or another to list your web site in a search engine directory. Located in the head of your web page code, your visitors don't see them but without them your web site won't get very many visitors.

In order for each of your web pages on your web site to be properly categorized by search engine spiders they must contain three very important meta tags.

Title Tag: This is the single most important tag. It is what search engines will use as the link to your web site within their directory. The title tag needs to contain as many keywords that apply to your page as possible, be no longer than 60 characters long (includes spaces) and be readable so that it will get people to click on it. Without a good title tag your web page stands little chance of coming up high in keyword searches done on search giants like Google.

Description Tag: This is what you hope the search engine will use for the brief description that is placed after your linked title in the search directory. It should also contain as many keywords that are important to the web page, be no longer than 150 characters (includes spaces) and be a legible sentence. It should reinforce the title making readers want to click on your listing but do not duplicate your title word for word in your description. Some search directories use your web page content in place of this description so be sure your first few sentences of content reflect the purpose of the page and the page title.

Keyword Tag: Over time these have become less relevant and in some cases not even looked at but most experts still highly recommended you use this tag to cover all your bases. The keyword tag should contain only the keywords relevant to the page they represent, be in order of importance, be no longer than 850 characters (includes spaces) and do not repeat any word, even with in a phrase, more than three times. If you use a keyword that is not also in the content of the web page some search engines will look at the whole page as not relevant to list. List your keywords in the order of importance to your content and title, with the first 8 to 10 keywords or phrases being the most important. Most all search engines will consider the over usage of keywords in either this tag or the content as spamming so be careful not to use any one form of a word more than three times in the keyword tag.

Using these three tags along with strong, relevant content will work in your favor with search engine spiders that come visit your web site from time to time.

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