Meta Tags
What are Meta Tags?
The meta tag in HTML is not required when you're creating your web page(s); many pages don't use tags at all. Briefly, the meta tag is used by some search engines to allow them to more accurately list your site in their indexes.
If you simply produce your home page and register the URL with a search engine, or a number of search engines, their spider programs will (eventually) find their way to your site to index it. However, each of the search engines do this slightly differently. For example, AltaVista will grab everything in your document and index it, but will only show the first 250 characters in its description. Consequently, if your site included say, 'Thanks to:....' right at the beginning, this is what AltaVista would show in its description, and it wouldn't give the viewer any idea of what your site actually covered. Of course, not all search engines work this way; I'd suggest you ferret around a little bit to see exactly how the popular engines work, and certainly the major two or three such as AltaVista, Lycos, Yahoo, Infoseek and Excite. It therefore makes sense to ensure that your opening paragraph is carefully written to ensure it accurately reflects what your site covers.
However, you may be able to exert a certain amount of control over how your site is indexed by the use of the meta tag. (I should however point out that not all search engines will use this tag - AltaVista does, but Excite doesn't, for example. Its not a total cure-all therefore, but you won't miss out by putting the tag in, and it may well work well in some cases.
Usage
Meta tags are used to define meta data. Meta data is information about a document.
There are no hard defined rules about what information a Search Engine, spider or crawler pulls from your site, but many Search Engines do make use of two primary meta tags: "description" and "keywords."
Both of these meta tags allow you to describe your site's content and function to increase the chance of Search Engines finding your site.
For the most part, the first few words get the most attention. I have seen many sites with meta keywords that go on line after line after line. The only thing this will do is possibly get your site banned for spamming. Take the time to pick a few important keywords for each page and be as specific as possible, e.g., if you are selling widgets, list "widgets," – not "blue widgets," "red widgets," "yellow widgets," "purple widgets," etc. Also list things that don't apply like "buy," "sell," "shop," and other things that are just too generic. Good, detailed content is your best bet to getting to the top of the Search Engines. Provide what the user is looking for – information!
Meta Tags Do Not Work Miracles!
Meta tags can be a useful tool in some, but not all Search Engines. The inclusion of meta tags is not a cure-all to get your site to the top listing or even the first page of Search Engines.
Meta Tags cannot help make up for the lack of content on your pages. The best strategy is to have good content, descriptive pages, good titles and text that is not hidden or buried on the bottom of the page.
Adding meta description and meta keyword tags to your web pages are essential for any Search Engine. Some Search Engines will give you a boost if you have them. But don't expect that to necessarily be enough to put you in the top ten.
Link Popularity
Link popularity is the single most influential factor for determining how well a website will perform in search engine rankings. A website's link popularity is computed from the number, and more importantly, the quality of links pointing to a website.
Link Popularity History
To gain a better understanding of link popularity, it is useful to know why it became so crucial for search engine rankings. In the past, a web page's ranking was determined, amongst other factors, by the number of keyword occurrences within 'on-page' elements, i.e., in-page text, META tags, title tag.When web developers learned that they could trick a search engine to return their web pages by cramming keywords into their pages, the search engines had to get a bit smarter. They were using 'on-page' elements to determine relevance so it was only natural that they would look to elements out of direct control of the web page creator, i.e., 'off-page' elements. Search engines made the assumption that the greater the number of links from other sites pointing to a website, the more popular the website is and therefore a more quality resource. This worked nicely in theory but in practice it was also to be abused.
Website owners figured out many ways to get links pointing to their websites one example of which was through the use of link farms – pages that contained nothing more than a collection of links – quantity of links was being abused, so the search engines made use of the old saying 'quality not quantity' and began to assign a quality factor to each of the links pointing to a website. Now websites that had a higher number of high-quality links were looked upon favorably by the search engines. Building link popularity became a science in itself and today is still the most time-consuming and frustrating activity for a search engine optimizer.
Main Classes of Links
In the following examples, SiteA is our website and SiteB is an outside site, that is a website under a different domain name than SiteA.Inbound Links
Inbound links to a website are links that originate from an outside website. An example would be a link on SiteB pointing into a page on SiteA.Outbound Links
Outbound links from a website are links pointing to a page outside of its own website. An example would be a link on SiteA pointing out to a page on SiteB.Reciprocal Links
An example of a reciprocal link is when SiteA links to SiteB AND SiteB links to SiteA, the link is reciprocated by both parties.To achieve a high link popularity, the type of links to build are inbound one-way links. This simulates how natural links are created, i.e., links that people create to point to your site because they found it worth linking to.
For outbound links, it is natural to assume that they might decrease link popularity of a website but this is not true. You do not give away your link popularity when you link to another site. However, they do not necessarily add to your link popularity.
Reciprocal links can add to your link popularity if the website that you exchange links with has a higher link popularity than your site. However they are not as powerful as inbound, one-way links as they are quite artificial in nature, i.e., most probably created by communication between the owners of both sites.
How to Build Link Popularity
So it is obvious to help build up a nice link popularity many inbound, one-way links need to be created. This can be achieved in a number of different (and most importantly, legal) ways.Directories
Directories are categorized listings of links from around the web. Many, many directories exist and vary in their methods of getting your link posted on them. They provide a great source of quality inbound, one-way links. Getting listed in quality directories such as DMOZ or Yahoo can be more beneficial for your link popularity than a lot of links from smaller, newer directories.Great Site Content
The most powerful way to get inbound, one-way links is to have great site content that other websites will want to link to. This allows you to get links from sites other than directories, which can definitely be better. The best thing about this is that it requires no communication on your part, it just happens naturally. If your site has poor content, other sites may not want to link, including the directories! Most of the top ranking websites today got to the top because of great content. Writing interesting and informative articles for your website is a good way of getting these kind of links.Emailing Website Owners
If you come across a listing of links on a website other than a directory, e.g., a link page on a somebody's personal website, it can do no harm to write the website owner a polite email requesting a link to your site from their page. They may request a reciprocal link but sometimes they do not and you can get a quality inbound, one-way link for your efforts. In personalized emails of complimentary remarks about their site, always ask them to visit your site first before making a decision to link to it.Summary
The best and most effective way of increasing your search engine rankings is working to improve your website's link popularity. This can be achieved by getting as many inbound, one-way links as you can from quality sites such as directories. Another way to get these links is by having great content on your site and requesting a link to your site from other websites.Increasing link popularity is a time-consuming and sometimes frustrating process but is definitely worth the time and effort when you see a dramatic increase in traffic.
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