|
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Meta tags in the head of the html page and how they can be used in search engine results.
A number of you who have your personal farm websites through Openherd have asked for the ability to customize your web page meta tags. We have now added this feature to additional web pages and articles under the My Pages tab. Just click the "Edit Meta Tags" link on the web page or article edit page and it'll expand a box where you can enter your own keywords and page description.
What is a "meta tag"? you might be asking. The word "meta" is Greek in origin and means "after", "beyond", "adjacent", or "self". In terms of web pages, meta tags provide additional information about the content and subject matter of the page they belong to. Meta tags are hidden html elements that are in the head of the document and can be used by search engines to identify or verify the relevance of page's content to keyword searches.
In the early days of the web, meta tags were used prominently in indexing and ranking page content. However, soon spammers put an end to that simplistic way of ranking pages by "keyword stuffing" meta tags with any words that would promote their page, regardless of their relevance. Today, most search engines pay little or no attention to meta tags as far as determining the relevance of a page's content but may use the meta tag information to supplement the information that is displayed in search results.
For example, if Google determines that one of your pages is a good match for a certain keyword search, it will grab a snippet of text from your page to display in search results. If you have included a "meta description" tag, then the search engines may opt to use your own meta description instead of the one they will automatically generate.
To summarize, meta tags can be worth the effort but they don't play a very big role in how you get indexed by search engines. It is more important to write articles and blogs that have content with your targeted keywords included in the text, page title, and any included links. Search engines try to mimic how human beings evaluate a page, so if you just focus on good, relevant content, you'll be doing well.
|