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META Tags 101

While the importance of META Tags has greatly diminished over recent years. They still do play some role in determining page relevance with certain search engines. There are many different META Tags. Many of you have heard of the (in)famous keyword META tag. More important are a page's TITLE and Description tags which can be viewed by your site visitors and have greater weight than keyword (which are invisible) tags at this point in time.

While the proper development and use of tags can be a complex subject, these tags are basically descriptive sentences and keywords which depict the unique nature of your site's reason for being; service; or products. These tags need not be incorporated at the time of creation. They can be added or modified at any time. Not sure if your site has tags included? You can view your site's home or index page's source code (View Source using Internet Explorer), When viewing this code, you should see a section containing all or some of the following tags:

<Title>Something placed here </Title>
META Name="Description" Some Description here.
Meta Name="Keywords" a listing of keywords here (which may, or may not, be separated by commas. It doesn't matter either way.)
Meta Name="Copyright"
Meta Name="Robots"
Meta Name="Rating"
Meta Name="Distribution"

These tags need to be well formed (readable to search engine web sites) and meaningful (descriptive of your site). You may also have these special tags included within other pages of your site. This may be particularly useful if your site is involved in multiple businesses (such as Financial Planning and Consulting). The most important thing to remember is that these tags should reinforce the written copy and message of your site (otherwise they are useless and can even have a detrimental impact on your site's ultimate search engine ranking). It is permissible to use keywords to add potential search engine phrases which you wouldn't want to place in viewable copy such as misspellings. (For instance, a Cincinnati, Ohio based hotel might include, "cincinati hotel" as a keyword phrase in order to "trap" this all too common misspelling of this city.

Here are some basic guidelines apply that will help you develop appropriate tags for your project:

Title- This tag should accurately reflect the nature of your site and contain no more than 15 to 20 words. Generally, this tag is returned in search engine queries. Be specific, and honest, about the content on the page. Avoid using lots of marketing hype in this tag.
Description- This is often used as an extension of the Title Tag explaining your site in greater detail. Limit this tag to no more than 20 to 25 words. This tag is also typically returned by search engines. Remember, relevance to copy located as part of the page is critical for this tag to have any positive value.

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PCMG Consulting
7252 Highway 70 South #1403
Nashville, TN. 37221
Toll Free: 866.646.7472
615.476.3770
Fax: 615.646.7472