Why are Meta tags important ?

Why are Meta tags important, one reason, search engines still use
them, especially Google.  Meta tags are useful in getting better
listings in the search engines.  All of the tags, title,
description and keywords are just standard HTML code which you will
need to place on the top of each page below the HEAD section. META
tags are not necessarily recognized by search engines as vehicles
for ranking, although some still do read them and use them.  Meta
tags are not a mystery, they are simple and powerful, make sure you
use them on your site. The reason you place the keyword tags on
your page is to let the search engines know that these keywords are
relevant to your page.

Keywords should be in a descending order of importance.  When using
Meta tags you they are important because it gives the search
engines valuable information to put into their results.  Make sure
the keywords are in the title as well as in the body of the text.
Make sure you write a description about your page using specific
information and keywords, but keep it short and sweet.  Although
your keywords should all be relevant, sometimes it is best not to
be too specific.

The Meta title is important on how your website is ranked the
search engines, the search engines use this title and internet
searches will refer to this title. The title should consist of the
keywords being emphasized on the page.  Importantly, the Meta title
will be underlined in the search results.    The title tags is very
important, most search engines use this in their search results and
this is your first sales pitch to draw in the potential customer.
Once you understand why the title is so important you will start
putting titles on all of your pages.

Sometimes even Google picks up description tag.  The title and
description should be short and to the point and they must include
the keywords you are promoting. When writing a description the
number of characters should be around 125-175, it will need to
describe your website or page. It should be a one sentence phrase
already in your head.  To avoid being truncated (that is, cut) by
search engines, the description should be brief – no more than 200
characters.  Your description contains your important key phrase
and key words.  If you place your description and title on each
page and make them different on each page this will increase your
chances of having all pages indexed and having your site rank well
in the search engines.  Make sure you write a description about
your page using specific information and keywords. That way, when
your keywords are searched for this description will be displayed.

The Keywords Tag is a group of keywords that represents the content
of your site.  If there is hardly any content on a page the search
engines will use the tags more often and be dependent on them.
Unfortunately, a picture is worth 1000 words to you and me, but
zero to a search engine. Many search engines will display this
summary along with the title of your page in their search results.
When you see the search results these are made up from the tags and
content of your page

Cheers!

Using NOODP and NODIR tags

When one of your web site’s pages shows up in a list of results on a search engine, what do people see? Often the contents of the description tag of your pages are displayed in the search results.

At other times the search engines will display portions of your page’s content which contain words used in the search query. This helps people to see if your page is relevant to their search request.

Sometimes, if you are listed in DMOZ (ODP), the search engines will display snippets of text about your site taken from them instead of your description meta tag. You can force the search engine to ignore the ODP information by including a robots meta tag like this:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noodp” />.

The “NOODP” robots meta tag is fully supported by Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.

If the search engine (in this case, Yahoo!) displays information about your site taken from the Yahoo! Directory instead of your description meta tag, you can force it to ignore the directory information by including a robots meta tag like this:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noydir” />.

It should also be perfectly reasonable to specify instructions for each individual crawling robot, such as indicated below.

* If you only have the problem with Google, you can use this:

<meta name=”googlebot” content=”noodp” />.

* If you only have the problem with Yahoo!, you can use this:

<meta name=”slurp” content=”noydir” />.

* If you only have the problem with MSN, you can use this:

<meta name=”msnbot” content=”noodp” />.

One of the most succinct methods is to use a single robots meta tag with multiple attributes separated by commas like this:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noodp,noydir” />.

Currently, only Yahoo!’s spider, Slurp, uses the Yahoo! Directory.

Once you add any of the above meta tags to your pages, it may take some time for changes to your snippets to appear.