Here is a quick Meta Tag help. Meta Age Creation Help <----your visual help! Below are reason for and what type, the link is the visual how to. Please note, this is in now way a substitute nor to override official Auctvia staff help files or documents on this topic. This is my self help. I am no expert on this. If I have made any errors, someone let me know and I'll update content.
What is a meta tag:? Meta-tags are used to describe a web page. Search engines use the information recorded in meta-tags to index that page and therefore contribute to which pages/web sites are returned in a search. Supplementary information placed on a webpage that isnt intended for the page visitors to see, but is used to pass information to search engine crawlers, browser software and other applications. META Tags META tags are part of HTML but are there for the sole use of search engine spiders. These (numerous) tags contain various information that the site owner wants to deliver to these spiders.
Why do I need to use Meta Tags? So folks can find your stuff!
Meta Tags are the HTML tags that sit in the Head of a HTML document. There are a number of different tags but to be honest there are really only three tags that we need to worry about when building webpages.
In the last few years, Meta Tags have really taken a hammering as Search Engine marketeers used Meta Tags to cram in as many Keywords as possible to influence their rankings. With this came a Search Engine backlash and they stopped using them as part of their Search Algorhythm - or at least that is what they have said. Maybe they did or maybe they didn't. What we are seeing though is that they are being used as part of determing what your webpages are about. So lets look at our three Tags....
The Title Tag, The keyword Tag and the Description Tag.
The Title Tag The Title Tag is the only Tag out of the three that you actually "see". The content of the Title Tag appears in the blue bar along the top of your browser. It also usually appears as the clickable title in the Search Engine results. Of the three Tags, the Title Tag holds the most power. It is essential that when writing a title for a webpage that you use the Keywords you wish to focus that page on as near to the beginning as possible.
Also as important is to make sure you have different titles for each page of your site.
The Title Tag sits normally right at the top of the HTML code and is sat inside HTML containers "title"
The Keyword Tag The Meta Keyword tag is the most abused and misunderstood Tag of all time. Webmasters would cram these full of Keywords in the hope that they would rank for them, even if the Keyword they put in their Tag was not even on the page of content. Make sure that all the Keywords you add to the Meta Keyword Tags are on the page. Make sure you include plurals of these Keywords too, but only if they are on the page of content. Keep them fairly short - if your webpage only has three or four keywords on it, then just add these to your Keyword Tags. There is no rule that says you have to fill it up with junk. The format for a Keyword Meta Tag is <meta name="keywords" content="enter your keywords here separated by commas">
The Description Tag Again, the Description Tag is fairly misunderstood in that lots of people claim it doesn't get used by any of the Search Engines and that it is a waste of time.
Recently Vanessa Fox, product manager for the Google webmaster tools, has confirmed that unique Meta Description Tags for each web page help Google determine the uniqueness of a web page. The Meta Description Tags are used to create the text snippets that are displayed in Google search results underneath the page heading.
She says: "Looking at your site in the search results, it appears that your pages would be well served by Meta Description Tags. For most queries, the generated snippet is based on where the query terms are found on the page, and in those cases, your results are fine. But for some more generic queries, where a logical snippet isn't found in the text, the generated snippet seems to be coming from the first bits of text from the page - in this case, boilerplate navigation that is the same for every page." While this is just Google, your Meta Description can be used by other Search Engines and Web Directories to describe your site when it appears in Search Engine Rankings. The correct format for a Description Meta Tag is <meta name="description" content="Enter your Description here. Try and keep your major Keywords near the front of this description.">
In conclusion The three tags described above play a large part in your on-page Search Engine optimisation strategies. Get these right and you could be winging your way up the rankings without any outside influence from link building or other time consuming techniques. At the same token, get it wrong, you could be penalised.
If you are pulling your hair out trying to figure out ways of getting your site listed higher in Google or the other Search Engines, then maybe it is time to revisit your webcode. Make sure you have unique Titles Keywords and descriptions on every page of your site. Get these changed then sit back and watch what happens. Remember, your pages are also not carved out of stone, you can amend then make changes and rework your Tags to see what effect they have on your rankings. The Search Engines love to see constantly evolving pages so simply testing your Tags will help you. Last tip : When all else fails remember - Search Engines see webpages not websites. Treat each page of your site as a separate and unique entity.
Title tag? This is already created when you name your inventory item. When you view your item in preview or it's final creation, you'll see this title in the browser title bar located at the top of the item page.This message has been edited. Last edited by: SoCalSindy,
Thank you SoCal! Now it makes much more sense to me! Nice tutorial!
quote:
Originally posted by SoCalSindy: Here is a quick Meta Tag help. Meta Age Creation Help <----your visual help! Below are reason for and what type, the link is the visual how to. Please note, this is in now way a substitute nor to override official Auctvia staff help files or documents on this topic. This is my self help. I am no expert on this. If I have made any errors, someone let me know and I'll update content.
What is a meta tag:? Meta-tags are used to describe a web page. Search engines use the information recorded in meta-tags to index that page and therefore contribute to which pages/web sites are returned in a search. Supplementary information placed on a webpage that isnt intended for the page visitors to see, but is used to pass information to search engine crawlers, browser software and other applications. META Tags META tags are part of HTML but are there for the sole use of search engine spiders. These (numerous) tags contain various information that the site owner wants to deliver to these spiders.
Why do I need to use Meta Tags? So folks can find your stuff!
Meta Tags are the HTML tags that sit in the Head of a HTML document. There are a number of different tags but to be honest there are really only three tags that we need to worry about when building webpages.
In the last few years, Meta Tags have really taken a hammering as Search Engine marketeers used Meta Tags to cram in as many Keywords as possible to influence their rankings. With this came a Search Engine backlash and they stopped using them as part of their Search Algorhythm - or at least that is what they have said. Maybe they did or maybe they didn't. What we are seeing though is that they are being used as part of determing what your webpages are about. So lets look at our three Tags....
The Title Tag, The keyword Tag and the Description Tag.
The Title Tag The Title Tag is the only Tag out of the three that you actually "see". The content of the Title Tag appears in the blue bar along the top of your browser. It also usually appears as the clickable title in the Search Engine results. Of the three Tags, the Title Tag holds the most power. It is essential that when writing a title for a webpage that you use the Keywords you wish to focus that page on as near to the beginning as possible.
Also as important is to make sure you have different titles for each page of your site.
The Title Tag sits normally right at the top of the HTML code and is sat inside HTML containers "title"
The Keyword Tag The Meta Keyword tag is the most abused and misunderstood Tag of all time. Webmasters would cram these full of Keywords in the hope that they would rank for them, even if the Keyword they put in their Tag was not even on the page of content. Make sure that all the Keywords you add to the Meta Keyword Tags are on the page. Make sure you include plurals of these Keywords too, but only if they are on the page of content. Keep them fairly short - if your webpage only has three or four keywords on it, then just add these to your Keyword Tags. There is no rule that says you have to fill it up with junk. The format for a Keyword Meta Tag is <meta name="keywords" content="enter your keywords here separated by commas">
The Description Tag Again, the Description Tag is fairly misunderstood in that lots of people claim it doesn't get used by any of the Search Engines and that it is a waste of time.
Recently Vanessa Fox, product manager for the Google webmaster tools, has confirmed that unique Meta Description Tags for each web page help Google determine the uniqueness of a web page. The Meta Description Tags are used to create the text snippets that are displayed in Google search results underneath the page heading.
She says: "Looking at your site in the search results, it appears that your pages would be well served by Meta Description Tags. For most queries, the generated snippet is based on where the query terms are found on the page, and in those cases, your results are fine. But for some more generic queries, where a logical snippet isn't found in the text, the generated snippet seems to be coming from the first bits of text from the page - in this case, boilerplate navigation that is the same for every page." While this is just Google, your Meta Description can be used by other Search Engines and Web Directories to describe your site when it appears in Search Engine Rankings. The correct format for a Description Meta Tag is <meta name="description" content="Enter your Description here. Try and keep your major Keywords near the front of this description.">
In conclusion The three tags described above play a large part in your on-page Search Engine optimisation strategies. Get these right and you could be winging your way up the rankings without any outside influence from link building or other time consuming techniques. At the same token, get it wrong, you could be penalised.
If you are pulling your hair out trying to figure out ways of getting your site listed higher in Google or the other Search Engines, then maybe it is time to revisit your webcode. Make sure you have unique Titles Keywords and descriptions on every page of your site. Get these changed then sit back and watch what happens. Remember, your pages are also not carved out of stone, you can amend then make changes and rework your Tags to see what effect they have on your rankings. The Search Engines love to see constantly evolving pages so simply testing your Tags will help you. Last tip : When all else fails remember - Search Engines see webpages not websites. Treat each page of your site as a separate and unique entity.
Title tag? This is already created when you name your inventory item. When you view your item in preview or it's final creation, you'll see this title in the browser title bar located at the top of the item page.
Thank you for your detailed tutorial. I especially enjoy the visuals, where I can see what words go where, it is especially important to me, since English is my second language and I learn the best seeing actual entries into the fields, then it's a piece of cake, so to speak hoppyeshopper www.bargainseekersintl.net
SoCalSindy, Thanks so much for taking the time to research and explain these tags to us. I have been reworking all my tags for days not just to see if I am getting it right. Bravo! Sincerely, Kimberly www.astrosportswear.com
OHHH, you ARE a DOLL!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm printing your tutorial off right now. I agree with LifeisLike, you are an angel. I swear, I've bragged about you so much to my husband that your ears should be burning. I have had the WORST, aggravating past 3 days (various problems with photo-host, yada, yada) and you have just made my week brighter!!! From the bottom of my heart dear, thanks!!! Mama hugs to you!
Well NOW I get it...I was still confused after reading your post Socal, but the pictures were WONDERFUL!!! Thank you so much! Now I have to go in and edit my 200 items! Wish I'd seen this post a few weeks ago!
A Million Trillion Thanks for this Info! I have been reading everything I could for over a year trying to figure out mega tags, then I stumbled across this posting and WOW! Were where ya, a year ago??? LOL
People need to write up more text in the body of there discription. If you dont have the owrd in the body you shoul dnot have it as a keyword..
Here is some usefull info.
The Meta Keywords Tag The meta keywords tag allows you to provide additional text for crawler-based search engines to index along with your body copy. How does this help you? Well, for most major crawlers, it doesn't. That's because most crawlers now ignore the tag. The few supporting it can be found on the Search Engine Features page).
The meta keywords tag is sometimes useful as a way to reinforce the terms you think a page is important for ON THE FEW CRAWLERS THAT SUPPORT IT. For instance, if you had a page about stamp collecting -- AND you say the words stamp collecting at various places in your body copy -- then mentioning the words "stamp collecting" in the meta keywords tag MIGHT help boost your page a bit higher for those words.
Remember, if you don't use the words "stamp collecting" on the page at all, then just adding them to the meta keywords tag is extremely unlikely to help the page do well for the term. The text in the meta keywords tag, FOR THE FEW CRAWLERS THAT SUPPORT IT, works in conjunction with the text in your body copy.
The meta keyword tag is also sometimes useful as a way to help your page come up for synonyms or unusual words that don't appear on the page itself. For instance, let's say you had a page all about the "Penny Black" stamp. You never actually say the word "collecting" on this page. By having the word in your meta keywords tag, then you may help increase the odds of coming up if someone searched for "penny black stamp collecting." Of course you would greater increase the odds if you just used the word "collecting" in the body copy of the page itself.
Here's another example. Let's say you have a page about horseback riding, and you've written your page using "horseback" as a single word. You realize that some people may instead search for "horse back riding," with "horse back" in their searches being two separate words. If you listed these words separately in your meta keywords tag, THEN MAYBE FOR THE FEW CRAWLERS THAT SUPPORT IT, your page might rank better for "horse back" riding. Sadly, the best way to ensure this would be to write your pages using both "horseback riding" and "horse back riding" in the text -- or perhaps on some of your pages, use the single word version and on others, the two word version.
I'm using all these capital letters on purpose. Far too many people new to search engine optimization obsess with the meta keywords tag. FEW crawlers support it. For those that do, it MIGHT! MAYBE! PERHAPS! POSSIBLY! BUT WITH NO GUARANTEE! help improve the ranking of your page. It also may very well do nothing for your page at all. In fact, repeat a particular word too often in a meta keywords tag and you could actually harm your page's chances of ranking well. Because of this, I strongly suggest that those new to search engine optimization not even worry about the tag at all.
Even those who are experienced in search engine optimization may decide it is no longer worth using the tags. Search Engine Watch doesn't. Any meta keywords tags you find in the site were written in the past, when the keywords tag was more important. There's no harm in leaving up existing tags you may have written, but going forward, writing new tags probably isn't worth the trouble. The articles below explore this in more detail:
Death Of A Meta Tag The Search Engine Report, Oct. 1, 2002
Meta Tags Revisited The Search Engine Report, Dec. 5, 2002
Still want to use the meta keywords tag? OK. Look back at the opening example. See the second meta tag shown, the one that says "name=keywords"? That's the meta keywords tag. The keywords you want associated with your page go between the quotation marks after the "content=" portion of the tag.
Inktomi says that you should include up to 25 words or phrases, with each word or phrase separated by commas. More advice from Inktomi can be found on its Content Policy FAQ.
FYI, in the past, when the tag was supported by other search engines, they generally indexed up to 1,000 characters of text and commas were not required.
Meta Robots Tag One other meta tag worth mentioning is the robots tag. This lets you specify that a particular page should NOT be indexed by a search engine. To keep spiders out, simply add this text between your head tags on each page you don't want indexed. The format is shown below (click on the picture if you want to copy and past the HTML for your own use):
You do NOT need to use variations of the meta robots tag to help your pages get indexed. They are unnecessary. By default, a crawler will try to index all your web pages and will try to follow links from one page to another.
Most major search engines support the meta robots tag. However, the robots.txt convention of blocking indexing is more efficient, as you don't need to add tags to each and every page. See the Search Engines Features page for more about the robots.txt file. If you use do a robots.txt file to block indexing, there is no need to also use meta robots tags.
The meta robots tag also has some extensions offered by particular search engines to prevent indexing of multimedia content. The article below talks about this in more depth and provides some links to help files. Search Engine Watch members should follow the link from the article to the members-only edition for extended help on the subject.
Image Search Faces Renewed Legal Challenge The Search Engine Report, August 22, 2001
Why can't I enter more than 256 characters for my keywords or description? Search engines each have a preferred size for keywords and description meta tags.
Yahoo! and some other search engines recommend limiting your meta tags to no more than 256 characters, so to save you some time (who wants to count characters?), we'll limit your page meta tags to 256 characters.
Remember that your keywords must be separated by commas, and your description should make sense, so don't skimp on punctuation just so you can cram more words into your tags. Instead, follow these tips to use your 256 characters wisely:
Don't repeat a keyword more than once in either tag. Use only words that actually describe and appear in your page content. Avoid generic words like Home Page and Web in favor of words specific to your business.
How should I write my keywords? Choosing the right keywords is the first step to a better search engine ranking. But how do you know which terms are right for your business? Consider these tips:
Remember the basics: Enter your keywords in order of importance, and be sure to use keywords that actually appear in your page content. Don't repeat keywords more than twice (and not consecutively!), separate your keywords with commas, and keep the list to under 256 characters. (Site Solution will limit the length of your keywords to 256 characters automatically.)
Be specific. Because there's so much competition for general keywords, you'll need to choose specific phrases to set yourself apart. For example, if you choose shoes as your keyword, you'll never get good results it's far too broad. Instead choose terms or phrases like women's patent leather high heels or canvas basketball sneakers san francisco. The more specific your keywords, the more targeted your traffic.
Include variations. People will search for your site using all sorts of search terms, including plurals, misspellings, and synonyms. Be sure to consider these when choosing your keywords.
Use only relevant keywords. Don't stuff your meta tags with keywords that don't relate to your page's content. Search engines consider this practice spamming and will penalize you.
Think about your audience. Which terms would your customers use to find your site? If you're not sure, ask your friends, family, and coworkers for ideas.
Look at your competition. If you're having trouble thinking of search terms, take a look at competitors' sites. Which keywords are they using? Do they include terms you're missing? (Find out how to see a page's meta tags.)
Tip: Once you choose your keywords, be sure to include them in your page content as well as in your meta tags!
Ok - I just went to target and did this on one of my toys.
I saw Meta tag keywords
and meta tag description.
These were the same and they used words that were not in the "description" of the product. So when people say make sure they are in the description. Do you mean just the meta tag description? I'm gathering that you must because people mention to include misspellings. I wouldn't want to purposely include them in my listing.
Could someone clarify with me whether or not I'm on the right track or not please?
I'm sorry for my denseness. Another question. It talks about limiting to 256 characters and when I looked at Target. They used 370 characters in each the keywords and description. Does this mean search engines only look at the first 256 characters. I'm just confused.
Thank you so much for all of your time and willingness to share this knowledge. I am so green as they say when it comes to ecommerce, online selling, html, seo, tags, and much,much more... There is just so much to learn! It's good, it's great! I guess the learning won't ever stop but I'll just get it little by little and enjoy the process.
SoCalCindy, ESD, CoveredBridge, Why2kwill, Michelle, and many others who are so helpful please know how grateful I am. You guys make a big difference in this community!
Originally posted by SoCalSindy: Here is a quick Meta Tag help.
What is a meta tag:?
The Title Tag, The keyword Tag and the Description Tag.
This is great... I've learned a lot over the years about keywords, but never quite understood the difference in Keywords & Meta Tags. This was one of my next research questions. You've made life so much easier. busterflies
Posts: 29 | Location: wandathurston@verizon.net | Registered: January 30, 2009
PocketChalker, those tools are amazing. Thanks so much! What really caught my attention was being able to see what "Advertiser Competition" used as their words!! Wonderful information.
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Me too! Thank God for her. 
