Google is currently the web's most popular search engine. Getting a high Google ranking is a must if you want your website to succeed! In addition to being the most used search engine in its own right, Google also provides the search results for other mega-sites, including America
Online. By following a few simple guidelines, you can watch your site climb up the Google ladder and your traffic will climb right along with it. This article will show you how to make effective use of meta tags to help your website climb that ladder!
It's imperative to use "Google friendly" meta tags. Meta tags give a web browser important information about your
website. Here are the most important meta tags for achieving a top ranking on Google:
1 - Title Tag - The title tag is the most important meta tag on your web page. Be sure to use a few of your primary keywords in your title tag. For example, the title tag on my homepage is:
<META NAME="TITLE" CONTENT="RLROUSE Handcrafted Appalachian Bird Houses And Bird Feeders">
As you can see, my title tag contains 8 very important keywords and 2 key phrases: handcrafted, Appalachian, bird houses, and bird feeders. This is what is known as
"spider food". When Google's spider crawls my homepage, it finds these keywords in the title tag. It also finds these same keywords sprinkled throughout the text (content) on the page. This effectively "links" the keywords in the title meta tag to the content on the page. This "linking" provides a high level of "relevance" for my site when someone goes to Google and does a search on one of my keywords, helping my site rank high in the search results for those keywords or key phrases.
2 - Description Tag - Another important meta tag is the "description" tag. My description tag looks like this:
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="We offer distinctive bird houses and bird feeders that are custom built and decorated by skilled Appalachian Mountain craftsmen.">
As you can see, my description meta tag contains several of my keywords and key phrases. This is important because it ties in with the title meta tag and the page content. When other websites link to yours (also very important for a
high Google ranking), they link to you using link "anchor text". The anchor text is the "clickable" part of the link. By providing the other webmaster with very specific anchor
text (which includes your keywords), that anchor text will tie in with your site's meta tags and keyword-rich content. This makes for a very well optimized web page for Google ranking purposes. Proper meta tags and effective linking
strategies form the backbone of a good site optimization plan for Google.
© 2003 Rick Rouse, RLROUSE.COM
About author:
Rick Rouse is the owner of RLROUSE Directory & Webmaster Resources. He is the author of several popular articles and ebooks on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and traffic building. Visit him at http://www.rlrouse.com.
