How to Create META Tags

META tags serve many functions in HTML but more importantly, they help search engines—and ultimately, customers—find your site. So be concise and descriptive.

To create META tags for this web page:

1. In the Page Title field, type your company name, relevant keywords (optional), and a descriptive title of the content on the page.
   
2. In the Keywords field, type 4-6 words or phrases that best describe your website, content, and how you want customers to find this page through search engines.
   
3. In the Description field, type a short paragraph about your web page and what you’re offering.
   
4. Now you are finished with this page's design and content, click the Submit button.

Why do I need META tags? META tags are marketing materials. They allow you to communicate what your site is offering and help customers find your site through search engines.

In actuality, META tags are hidden bits of information (such as key words and a description) that search engines (i.e., Yahoo, Snap, etc.) use to categorize and index your site. When you register with a search engine, the search engine reads your META tags first. So META tags become very important when you want your site to be noticed.

This is particularly true for web pages that consist mostly of graphics. Web sites that lack descriptive text and don’t use META tags have little chance of coming up in the results of a search engine query.

But using META tags won’t guarantee that your site will make top ten in the query. Search engines sort web pages in order of the density of keywords in the document. It doesn’t matter how many times keywords appear in the document, only the percentage. (But this varies among search engines.)

So if your main page mostly consists of graphics, you may want to consider putting in a brief paragraph of text that accurately describes the site’s content—this gives larger engines something to index.

How to choose Keywords
Keywords are descriptive words or phrases that describe the content of your site. For example, if your site is about Orthodontics, effective keywords to use would be: orthodontics, braces, crooked teeth, retainers, etc. Search engines use your site’s keywords to determine your priority to their query.

To choose effective keywords:

1. On a piece of paper, write down as many descriptive words and phrases about your site and its content. (Brainstorm Tip: Think about what words you would type in a search engine to find your site or sites that are your competitors.)
2. Go through the list and pick out 4-6 words/phrases to use as your keywords. These keywords should focus on what is most important about your site.
3. Now that you have your keywords, type them in the field provided. Use commas to separate keywords and avoid using spaces—this removes confusion for some search engines.

Make sure your 4-6 key words are concise and relevant to what your web page is about. If you have more key words, don’t worry. You can use different key words for each of your web pages.

Why is the META description important?
Like keywords, a META description describes the content of your site and allows search engines to find you. The description is particularly important because it allows you to control your summary in the search engine display. META descriptions play a big role in search engine queries—this is especially true for Excite and Web Crawler that do their queries based on META descriptions.

Why should I use META titles?
The Title META tag is also very important. The META title describes the contents of the specific web page and is another source search engines use to do their queries—some search engines give more weight to META titles, so be specific. You should begin your title with the most important keyword/phrase of your entire site then it should reference what is on that specific page. For example: Orthodontics Price List. Orthodontics is the key word that is most relevant to the website and Price List is the most relevant phrase to the contents of that specific web page.

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