To see meta tags a visitor can while viewing most web pages, select “view” on their browser tool bar, then select “source,” where they will be able to look at all the HTML of that page unless it is protected or hidden by a frame.

The most important part of the meta tags are the Title, Description, and Keyword tags. However, the HEAD/HEAD tags are important because they tell the spider that it is the area where the tags exist. Also, there must be a BODY tag after the/HEAD tag or the spider can not read the tags at all.

The TITLE Tag
- TITLE your title goes between these two tags/TITLE

The Title tag should be between 4 and 60 characters long, or thereabout, and preferably over 30. If the title isn’t descriptive enough it may not receive a good ranking from the robots. Be sure to include keywords you want to rank well for in the title, because it is one of the most important ranking components of the page. “Mandy’s Playhouse” may be a cool site name, but it’s unlikely that anyone is searching the engines for those particular words. It’s better to place in the title tag what is available at “Mandy’s Playhouse;” for instance: “Games, Music, Chat, and Fun” – do not repeat words here or the engines will penalize your ranking for the repeated words. Then, whatever your title says is what you want it to say at the top of your visible page, preferably in H/H tags. This way the spider can read the title in the meta tag, compare it to the page, see that it adds up, and will rank the page better.

The DESCRIPTION Tag
- META NAME=”description” CONTENT=”your description goes here”

This tag contains a short blurb describing the page contents. Once again it is vital to get in some keywords. Remember at the search engine level you are first talking to a robot, and secondly, only later (after the page is indexed) to humans.

You need to try to create descriptions that will appeal to a spider ranking you in the first place and that will appeal to a reader potentially clicking through in the second place. There is some dispute between various sources about what length a Description tag should be, but apparently bettwen 110 and 150 characters works best. Shorter (110 characters) is probably better. Get your keywords in but do not repeat them and do not repeat the “Title” tag in your Description tag (it’s a waste of quality words and will hurt your ranking).

The description written in your Description tag ought to appear in some variation on your page, the closer to the top of the page, the better. Once again, the spider will compare the tag to the content and see that they add up.

The KEYWORDS Tag
- META NAME=”keywords” CONTENT=”your keywords go here”

Robots are beginning to ignore this tag because so many people add words here that do not relate even remotely to their page. A form of SPAM is repeat keywords here again and again in hopes of ranking high for them; but the spiders are onto this and pages with words overly repeated in this tag are penalized by being ranked low or being disqaulifed altogether and not being indexed. Various sources have various angles that dispute one another on the subject of how many times a keyword can be repeated.

Some say a keyword should be repeated 7 times, some say no more than 3 times, and some say no word should not be repeated at all (meaning place the word in the tag once and once only). In light of this controversy I suggest not normally using a word more than once unless it is unavoidable.

Keywords work the same as words in the Title and Description tags. 90% (better yet 100%) of the keywords listing in your tag should appear on your page, and not in a “list” and not overly repeated on the page; they should be used relevantly in real sentences that actually matter to the overall content of the page. Characters in the Keyword tag should not exceed 800 or so and less is better.

Many spiders ony read the first 7 keywords anyhow and ignore the rest; for this reason place your most important keywords first. Do not use commas; they are not needed and they separate words that could be better used in “key phrases.”

Key phrases are two or more words used together that people might potentially use in a search. For instance someone might search for “new cars,” instead of just “cars.” If you use commas in your keyword tag then you’ll have to repeat words to get phrases: “new” , “new cars” , and “cars.” Without the commas you simply list “new” before “cars” and it becomes all three potential search inputs.

Do not include a lower case and upper case version of keywords; most spiders are not case sensitive, and most searches are conducted in small letters, even when it’s a proper name.