Meta Tags Published by Alan Stewart Submitted: 16 September,2004 In order for the search engines, to rate your site, you have to have some special lines added into your html document. These lines tell the search engines, what your site is about, and what keywords you feel are related to your site. A common misconception in the web designing world, is the more keywords you have the better. This is not true. To be effectively indexed by the search engines, your keywords need to be listed in the body of your html document. But more importantly, they have to be logically listed in the body. A few years ago, there was a "trick" that was used by web site owners, to put either real small text at the very bottom of the page, of just the keywords to trick the search engines into thinking that the keywords were used right. Guess what?.. The search engines figured this out and now will penalize a site for doing that. Another "trick' from the past was to put the keywords as the same color of the background of the page. So they would not be seen by the surfer, but would be picked up by the search engines. Again, this has been figured out by the search engines, and they will penalize a site, by either banning them,from being indexed, or just never indexed. The rule of thumb to use is, write your pages with good content, utilizing your keywords in an effective manner. To many people create their website, for the search engines, not for the surfers. Last I heard, search engines don't do much buying of things on the internet, but the surfers still do. :) Do not fall into the trap of constantly changing your page to try and get listed high on a search engine. Because what you do for one search engine, you will have to do something else for another one. Write your pages for the people that will be coming to your site. Utilizing this basic but sound practice, will keep your visitors coming back time and time again. Now for the codes. <meta name="Description" content=" "> <meta name="Keywords" content=" "> Just put inbetween the parenthesis a good description of your site and in the keyword line, your keywords that you want to be indexed under. Your keywords need to be utilized in your html document effectively. If your content is good, and you have utilized your keywords effectively, then your job is done. Just sit back, and wait, for the search engines to reward you. About the Author Alan operates Web Tools Resource a help site for learning html, and other aspects in creating a web site. Lots of helpful tutorials and ideas.