Search Engines

How to Create, Add, Check and Analyse Meta Tags

This meta tags tutorial is designed to help you make the best use of your meta tags. Meta tags are still important in the majority of search engines – make sure your meta tags are configured well to maximise your search engine positioning.

Meta tags should always be placed in the head section of the HTML document between the actual <HEAD> tags, before the BODY tag. This is very important with framed pages, as a lot of webmasters tend to forget to include them on individual framed pages.

Remember, if you only use meta tags on the frameset pages, you may be missing a large number of potential visitors.

Meta tags are important. Do not underestimate their importance in today’s modern search engine algorithms.

What is the general format for meta tags?

Meta tags generally follow the format as detailed below:

<html>
<head>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”This page ….” />
<meta name=”description” content=”This page ….” />
<meta name=”robots” content=”index,follow” />
<title>…</title>
</head>
<boy>

Essential meta tags for the Search Engines

The TITLE tag is not actually a META TAG but it is the most important tag for search engines:

<title>These are my most important keywords up to approx 8 words / 64 characters</title>

The title tag is what most search engines display and what your potential visitor will see first before selecting which site to view from the list so make sure it is effective.

Using the META description attribute, you can add your own description for your pages:

<META NAME=”description” CONTENT=”Sony Digital Cameras Online – Supplier of Sony Digital Cameras at the Lowest prices! Cornwall, Plymouth and Devon.” />

Use a minimum of 85 characters and up to a maximum of 200 characters, and make sure that you include several of your keywords in the description.

Keywords are very important since it is through them that people will find your site.

<META NAME=”keywords” CONTENT=”digital,camera,cameras,supplier,devon,plymouth,cornwall,sony” />

Use a minimum of 150 characters (20 keywords) up to around 600 characters (90 keywords) and put the most important keywords as close to the top of your page as possible. By the way, don’t think you can spike the keywords by using the same word repeated over and over, as most search engines have refined their spiders to ignore such spam. Instead, use each keyword only once (include both singular and plural forms if appropriate).

Tell the robots which pages to index – and which not

<META NAME=”robots” CONTENT=”index,follow” />

The default for the robot attribute is “all”. This would allow all of the files to be indexed. “None” would tell the spider not to index any files, and not to follow the hyperlinks on the page to other pages. “Index” indicates that this page may be indexed by the spider, while “follow” would mean that the spider is free to follow the links from this page to other pages. However, “noindex” would tell the spider not to index this page, but would allow it to follow the links and index those pages. “nofollow” would allow the page itself to be indexed, but the links could not be followed. As you can see, the robots attribute can be very useful.

Optional Meta Tags

You can also specify the distribution of your pages for indexing. It can be global, or restricted to certain countries.

<META NAME=”distribution” CONTENT=”Global” />

To help the robots classify your site, you have the possibility of assigning a rating for your pages:

<META NAME=”rating” CONTENT=”General” />

If you are making revisions to your site or updating frequently, it is helpful to ask the robots to revisit your site after a certain time. It is recommended that you use a time frame between 3 weeks to 6 months.

<META NAME=”revisit after” CONTENT=”30days” />

Meta Tag Generator

Now you are armed with the knowledge it is time to build your new meta tags with our meta tag generator, then simply incorporate them into your site and within the time the engines will pick up your new tags.

Visit the Meta Tag Generator

How long before I am listed on Google?

First, submit your site to Google here:

Submit your URL to Google

It can take many weeks for Google to index your site.

In the meantime, check that your index page is well optimised for the search engines. Pay special attention to your index page TITLE and DESCRIPTION meta tags.

Take a look at the following page for hints and advice concerning your meta tags.

SEO Help pages

We have some general advice on site optimisation at our Optimisation Tips area:

Site Optimisation tips

Please follow the link below to view Google’s SEO starter guide:

SEO Starter guide

Even with the best optimisation, it is very much hit+miss. The Google ranking algorithm changes very frequently and so any high ranking achieved may only be temporary before the algorithm gives another site a chance at the top.

We wish you the best of luck with your site optimisation.

SEO For Beginners

Everyone wants to maximise their search engine positioning in the SERPS, but, where do you start on SEO? There is an endless amount of information on SEO so let us help you.

Based on the enquiries we regularly receive from our customers, we have compiled 10 SEO beginner videos to get you started.

Whether you are an absolute beginner or more advanced looking to revise the basics, the following 10 videos will definitely assist your SEO efforts:

    1. What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?
    2. How Search Engines Work
    3. SEO Myths Explained
    4. 5 Steps to improve your SEO
    5. How to get your site listed in a few days
    6. How to get free web submissions
    7. How to boost your SERPS rankings
    8. What is Google PageRank?
    9. The importance of keywords
    10. 5 free ways to get SEO traffic

We hope you enjoy these videos and if our objectives are correct, your appetite will be whetted (is that a word?) to move on to more advanced levels in time. World domination is within your grasp!

301 Redirect = SEO friendly web forwarding

At last! We have added the 301 Redirect as a forwarding type for parked domain names!

The much requested (and needed) feature is now live for all parked domain names. The 301 redirect is the SEO friendly redirect which is recommended by all major search engines as well as openly by Google.

So, you ask, why is the 301 redirect different from the 302 redirect? A valid question indeed!

The 302 redirect is what you would use when redirecting a domain name to a another location temporarily, it means that any ‘link juice’ value contained in a domain name (or page) is reserved and it is NOT passed on to the target location. So when the temporary period is over your domain is back to where it started with it’s original link value restored.

The 301 redirect is the “permanently” moved redirect, this tells the search engines that this is a permanent change and any link value associated with the domain name should be passed on to the target location.

In short, if you have a domain name which stores your primary web site, you should ensure that any secondary domain names that you have registered use a 301 redirect to the primary site. This ensures that all visitors to your secondary domains are forwarded to your primary site as well as any link value for each domain is also added to your primary domain thus adding to you SEO rank position.

We offer three different styles of web forwarding and redirection with every domain name:

How to get listed in Google

It is quite amazing how often this question comes up.. So, to address a very very common question here is the simple answer…

Get some backlinks! Even one link is enough for Google to find your site and begin indexing, don’t hold your breath though, Google will take weeks to index and list your site.

You can get some very easy backlinks for free by doing some Directory Submissions, allow 5 minutes of your time for each submission. Remember, you only need to do this once so grab a coffee and get started.

Here’s a handy tip, want to give Google a nudge?

Submit your site directly to Google here:

For Google UK: http://www.google.co.uk/addurl

For Google.com: http://www.google.com/addurl

Check to see if your site is indexed by Google by doing a search as such:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:mydomain.co.uk

Obviously replace “mydomain.co.uk” with your domain name! If the result says “Your search did not match any documents” then your site is not yet indexed. When your site is indexed, you will see which pages – and how they look in Google search results.