Optimize Your Website for Search Engine Traffic

When your website appears on a page of search results, its title and a short description appear to give viewers an idea of what content is displayed on your site. If you haven't included the proper meta tags in your site, some search engines will display only a few terms relevant to the search items the user entered. This doesn't always provide a clear idea of what your site is about. In addition, some search engines rely mostly on meta tags to produce results. Either way, you'll benefit by ensuring your site includes the proper tags.

What Are Meta Tags?

Meta tags are "invisible" html codes read by search engines in order to rank your site. They don't appear anywhere on your page when a viewer clicks on your link, but they dictate what search engines "see" on your site. Including meta tags requires a bit of basic html knowledge. If you've built your site in html, you're good to go in adding these codes. If you've built your site in a site builder such as FrontPage or GoLive, you'll have to click "view source" in order to get away from the layout view and see your html. If you've used a template from a site like Angelfire or FreeWebs, you may need to select the advanced html options in order to view your source code.

The Meta Title

The meta title is what appears in the title bar at the very top of your Internet browser window. If you're reading this, the title you'll see probably reads, "Associated Content - Online Publishing System." The meta title is important not only because it identifies your site, but also because most search engines rank the title of your page very carefully by the keywords you include here.