Compulsory First Post

[lynne]

Hi:
I just received the email from the administrator telling me it is compulsory to post at least once to remain in the forum. I'm not sure yet if the forum is useful to me. I came here looking for information on using certain Photoshop features and found no one replied to my post. I'm a web designer, not terribly technical and usually flying solo when it comes to learning new stuff. I'm trying to teach myself Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver mx (having finally wrapped my mind around Dreamweaver 6) and get some really straight answers about how meta tags and search engines work together.

Anyone wanna take me on?

Thanks!

Lynn E.

[The Tool]

Meta Tags do not affect the appearance of a web site and are not visible when you look at a Web page, but they provide information regarding the content of the site. Meta Tags are used primarily by search engines that scan through the programming code and text of each page.

When you properly submit a web site to a search engine, that search engine sends out a robot called a "spider" or "crawler". This robot is a program that looks at your site, decides if it will be indexed, and then (if you're accepted) looks through your web page more thoroughly before finally indexing it into a specific search engine database.

It is during this stage that having properly written Meta Tags is important. If the spider or crawler encounters optimized Meta Tags on your home page it will have a much easier time when looking at the rest of your site. Meta Tags make the spider's job easier by providing the spider the information it is looking for such as, keywords, a description, rating, and other variables.

Meta Tags of http://www.windowsxpatoz.com
<META name="description" content="Find tweaks, tips, articles, downloads, wallpapers for microsoft windows xp.">
<META name="keywords" content="tweak, tweaks, xp, winxp, windows, microsoft, ms, whisler, visual, styles, skins, windowsxptweaks">

Search engines also see the content of the site not just meta tags.

[lynne]

Thanks for the information, Mr. Tool. I actually knew most of that, but am stuck on the points you kinda glossed over.

F'rinstance, varoius books, online articles, and friends say different things about exactly what meta tags spiders look at. The popular notion these days seems to be that only the title, key words, and description tags mean anything at all and that any other tags are a waste of time.

I also encounter lots of conflicting advice about how to properly select key words for each page, how many can be used, how many times a word may be repeated, how many words must match in each tag and also appear on that page. I run 4 web sites of my own and am building some for others. I don't want to submit them to search engins until I feel confident I'm handling this most important step correctly.

I've also heard that popular misspellings of key words should be included to help those who are spelling challenged find your site. All of this information (or misinformation, as the case may be) leaves me scratching my head and wondering what the really smart way to approach this would be.

So, here's an example I'd love for anyone out there who knows their stuff to take a crack at: I've got a site called The Public Room. It's a personal site dedicated to separating truth from fiction about the events of September 11. I built it in a hurry in the weeks after the event and never bothered with meta tags. Go ahead and have a look at the site and the source code and tell me what YOU think the tags should be for the home page and/or the main menu pages.

It is my sincere hope that this challenge stimulates a good, healthy, enthusiastic discussion about this topic. I'd love to finally feel I've gotten to the bottom of it, and believe this forum may be the best place to drag this beast out into the light of day and slay it.

Best,

Lynn E.

[JackOfTradez()]

Meta tags are not important like they used to be. Search engines are intelligent now, with intelligent and sometimes A.I. algorithms. Google currently ranks supreme in this regard. It is the text on the actual page that counts most. You can repeat a key word or phrase throughout the page/site in many different contexts. This will give it high search ranking. YOU need to do some thinking and planning to make this work right. I have been experimenting with this related to my own web site. It is interesting what I have been finding out, and how my web site is called up with different search phrases. The TITLE of the web page also is very important.

[ESALADUANE]

I just wanted to say I like your site. I'm sorry I can't help, I don't know a thing about creating web sites.

[lynne]

Esaladuane, thank you for the compliment. It was very much appreciated.

Of course, Mr. Trade's response gives me tremdous hope that the work ahead of me on changing the tags on all 4 of my sites (about 1,000 pages) may not be necessary.

Does anyone out there agree or disagree with him? I'd like to get a concensus.

Thanks again everyone.

Lynn E.

[a5thbrat]

I'm in the same boat as EsalaDuane (hope I spelled that correctly) ... I really don't know Diddly (well... I think I went to school with his brother...) either... But am always eager to learn more (actually, anything at all would be about a 100% increase...) But, somehow, I got hooked into being a manager of an online community, and have been doing a little research on metatags, myself. Actually, I found some pretty good information on the "Spider" ("Spyder"?) website -- in language that even I could understand...

Just thought I'd "toss that in"...

I'll shut up now.

[lynne]

a5thbrat:

Did you say you actually found a web site that has information about spiders? Not sure I understood your comment there. If you did, will you post it so we can all visit?

Thanks and good luch in your own education and exploration!

Lynn E.