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Greetings,
The term ‘meta tag’
used to be synonymous with search engine optimization.
Times have changed, and website owners can no
longer rely on this shortcut alone to make their
sites appear in search engine results.
For a website to do well in
search engines, it has to be written with the
needs of the audience in mind. If its content
answers the questions that people are asking,
it’s more apt to be found. Focusing on the
quality of your words and content is a solid strategy.
-Andrea Harris-
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Last Month's
Issue
You
Can Build It, but They May Not Come (Feb
04)
What does
Google think of you? This
is good for a laugh. Googlism.com
will find out what Google thinks of you, your
friends or anything! If it comes up blank for
your complete name, try just your first name.
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The Myth of Meta Tags
One of the biggest misconceptions I hear from business
owners is that they just need meta tags inserted on
each page to have their websites found on search engines.
It’s not that easy, and it’s a good thing
it’s not. Otherwise, it would be too easy to fool
search engines.
What are Meta Tags?
Meta tags are bits of hidden code that are part of
the HTML of a web page. You don’t see them, but
search engines can. The most common type of meta tag
associated with search engines is the Key Word meta
tag. This tag contains important words that appear on
the page. For example, one of the pages at Palm.com
includes the following key words, all of which have
to do with a particular product: zire, handheld, palmpilot,
pilot, hotsync.
There’s a good reason why you may have heard
that Key Word meta tags are important. Search engines
used to use them to find and rank sites. But, unfortunately,
many unscrupulous website owners abused them. In a ploy
to attract more website visitors, they stuffed their
Key Word tags with popular key words that had nothing
to do with their websites. Some even used their competitors’
names in the Key Word tag in an attempt to siphon off
potential sales from the competition.
After seeing too many skewed results, many search engine
companies wised up and rewrote their search algorithms
to ignore Key Word meta tags. Google, for example, doesn’t
use them at all.
When search engines take away the ability to pull tricks,
website owners are forced to focus instead on putting
higher quality content on their pages. That quality
content helps attract search engines. And when people
doing Google searches reach those pages, they are more
apt to find what they’re looking for.
Should You Bother?
So, should you bother with Key Word meta tags? It’s
a good practice to include them, but for the most part,
it’s not worthwhile to obsess over them. Just
remember, if a web developer tells you that your website
is optimized for search engines simply because he added
meta tags, don’t believe it. It used to be true,
but it’s not anymore.
Creating websites with well-written, high-quality content
ensures a double bonus: satisfying both man and machine
— humans and search engine spiders.
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