Infinity Web Design

Meta tags are useful in web design as they often help the search engine "robots" index your site. However, not all search engines rely on meta tags, so having meta tags is not an end-all, be-all solution to achieving top search engine placement. Extensive information about the subject of meta tags and some of the search engines that use them can be found at Search Engine Watch, a useful site for understanding how search engines work.

Meta tags are invisible to visitors to your site as they reside within tags coded into your HTML code. While there are many different meta tags that can be coded into your site, we will address the three that are arguably the most important.

There is no standard for how the search engines that do use meta tags will use them for indexing sites, so there are no definitive rules that will apply to all search engines because each one can vary in how many characters it will accept in each field. We therefore must balance our desire to include as much useful information as possible that will result in more "hits" against the need for brevity so that our information is used by all search engines without prematurely ending our desired meta tags. The guidelines that follow are suggestions based on current available search engine information.

Title
The title tag has many uses. First, it is the name that will be displayed in the user's browser's title bar. It is also the name that will be used to refer to the bookmark (Netscape) or favorite (Internet Explorer) place. It will also usually appear as the title of your site when search results are displayed.

Suggested Maximums:

25-30 characters
3-5 words

Description
The description is typically used to describe your site's content and usually appears when search results are displayed. The title description should be written in grammatically correct sentence format.

Suggested Maximums:

150-200 characters
20-25 words

Keywords
Keywords are typically used to index your site and cross-reference it in the search engine database so that when searches are run with words that match your keywords and site content, your site can be included in the search results.

General suggestions for developing keywords are as follows:

Keywords should be organized from the most relevant to the least relevant.
Keywords should be separated only by commas.
Duplication of words and phrases should be avoided.
Wherever possible, use the plural form as the singular form is already contained in the root of the word and can be extrapolated from your keywords.
Do NOT use "popular" keywords designed to boost site traffic but that do not actually pertain to your site. This practice is highly discouraged and most search engines will ban sites that utilize this unethical method of obtaining visitors.
Beware of trademark infringement. Even as a reseller or distributor of another's products, make sure your advertising practices are done with permission and are not an infringement of another's legal rights. Many large companies have very large staffs whose sole purpose is to surf the Internet to find violations of their trademarks and copyrights. Better safe than sorry.

Suggested Maximums:

1,000 characters
150 words

These are just the basics with respect to meta tags. More information can be found at Search Engine Watch. For comments or questions, please contact Infinity Web Design, or complete our online Request Form to further discuss your web design project needs.