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According to Site Metrics only 32% of over 53,000 commercial sites surveyed in October, 1998 use keyword tags and 28% use description tags. A summary of this survey can also be found at NUA Surveys Directory . Some search engines rely on your meta tag description and keyword tags to place your site in search lists. This means that 70% of the web sites out there are missing out on the opportunity of top placement in a number of search engines.

So how much do these tags really effect placement? I decided to run some tests on this whole meta tag concept. Do meta tags really work? How do the sites which get top placement structure their tags? Is there a secret ingredient to top ranking status using meta tags or titles? Let me share with you the results of this first survey. This will be an ongoing series, so watch for future surveys at the Meta Tag Channel .

Survey Structure

The survey was conducted as follows:
Phase 1: First a run of the "meta tags" search term is conducted at a number of different search engines. (I figured, since I'm studying meta tags, why not learn from the best: Sites that show up under the keywords "Meta Tags".)

Phase 2: The results are compiled and a list is made of which sites placed most in the top 10s. Then a review of the top sites is undertaken to see what tags they used. Here is what I found out.

I. Background on Meta Tags

Meta tags are hidden codes placed at the top of your HTML document to give a search engine the important keywords and description of your web site. There are actually a number of meta tags. But the two most important for site placement are the keywords tag and the description tag. The keywords tag provides the possible search terms people may use to access your site. The description tag provides a brief, concise description of your web site to display on the search results page. The HTML document is the blueprint to your web page. The search engine is the place that indexes web sites for easy web searching. It may also be referred to as a portal (provides search tasks plus extra perks) or directories (provides directory listings of web sites by subject matter).

With millions of web sites in publication, it is sometimes difficult to get your site placed in the top 10 of these search engines. If you don't get placed in the top 10, your site may not be looked at. Adding meta tags may increase your chance of accurate top 10 placement of your web site. So many feel that meta tags are very important. Some search engines do not use meta tags. Others do but only as an additional keyword in their total indexing of your site. Finally, other search engines rely heavily on these for site placement. In conclusion, to error on the safe side, it is better to include meta tags, then not to include meta tags.

II. What Tags Matter?

1. meta tags was used 178 times
2. html meta tags was used 8 times
3. free meta tags was used 5 times
4. meta tags code was used 4 times
5. meta + tag was used 3 times
6. meta + in HTML was used 3 times
7. meta + in tutorials was used 2 times
8. stealth meta tags was used 2 times
9. meta tag builder was used 2 times
10. how to meta tags was used 2 times

1. web site promotions came up 357 times
2. promotion came up 210 times
3. web promotion came up 118 times
4. web page promotions came up 104 times
5. health promotion came up 96 times
6. web site promotion came up 90 times
7. internet promotion came up 46 times
8. free web site promotion came up 38 times
9. site promotion came up 34 times
10. sales promotion came up 32 times

If you want to do this you can too. This is a really nice service offered by GoTo. Try it with your key site term using this. Practice Frame to view their screen with this screen at the same time. (This will only work if you have a frame-enabled browser. Otherwise click the GoTo Link above, and use your Go Back arrow to come back here later.) You may also want to check out Rank This to see what places are coming up in the top ten for different search engines under the keywords you will be using for your web site.

Use this Practice Page to try Rank This while viewing this document at the same time. (Once again, this will only work if you have a frame-enabled browser.) Pretty interesting, don't you think?

The Meta Tag Research Results :

Sites with 3 or More Listings in Search Engines:

1. Web Developer's "Meta Tag Tutorial" placed in 4 sites.
2. Meta Tag Builder was placed in 5 sites.
3. Internet.Com placed in 3 sites.
4. Philb.Com placed in 5 sites.
5. Meta Tag placed in 3 sites.
6. Y4i's Meta Tags placed in 3 sites.
7. Meta Magic placed in 4 sites.
8. Web Site Promote's Meta Tags Generator placed in 3 sites.
9. Tag Gen placed in 3 sites under two different URLs.

It is interesting to note that there was a nice compliment of sites placing in these top 10s. Three sites placed in 4 to 5 sites. One was a tutorial (philb.com). One was a news magazine's article (developers.com). And one was a meta tag generator (meta tag builder.com). Hurray for the search engines! I was particularly interested in philb.com's site. Here was a site, without a big e-mag developer's presence or a "meta tag" based domain name dominating the meta tag meta's scene. How did they do it?

Well, their tags tell a story. It's called: "Be Precise; Be Concise". It is not quantity that matters but quality. Not one of the top sites had more than 20 keyword tags. Consider the following:

The Philbs site and the other 2 top placing meta tag sites all had one thing in common: they all had few keyword meta tags.

• Philbs.com made the top grade with 4 tags: "meta, tags, html, tutorial". Their description was equally brief: "Short tutorial on the use of meta tags". Their title, "Meta Tag Short Tutorial". Now what do those three things tell you? - META TAGS! Well, that's what they told the search engine robots. The tutorial lived up to its title. It was a short and helpful meta tag tutorial. The search engines made a good call.

  Very nice, very brief, and very potent. It got this privately named site listed in more places than any other meta tag site on the top 10 lists. That is pretty impressive. And it does the job it says it is going to do. Even more impressive.

• Meta Tag Builder, which tied with Philb.com in the numbers game, told a similar tale. Their tags were also brief. They used, "meta tags, meta, search engine placement, web site promotion, meta tag" for their keywords. They used, "Generate meta tags for free and increase your web site's search engine placement" for their description tag. The title, "Meta tag builder - Generate Meta Tags". But what did these three things =? Meta Tags!
• The "Back To the Basics: Meta Tags" article by Developers.com used the same approach. In fact, only 1 of their 6 keywords actually stated meta tags. They used, "web developer.com, web developers, web site developers, web masters, how to design web sites, meta tags". Their description and title were the same, "Back to the Basics: Meta Tags". (Actually, some search engine sites ask you not to do that.) Very nice, makes the point, and gets top grades with the search engines.

So what worked with the hot meta tag sites? They kept their tags brief but they hit hard on the term "meta tags". They used this same term in their title, description, and keywords. The combination of these factors told the search engines that this tag's main focus was meta tags. This got them higher placement at the top search engines. The lesson to be learned from this survey: More is not necessarily better. The quality of your tags, titles, and domain names mean more than just random listings of everything you can possibly think of related to your web site.

• Study the web page you are seeking to place.
• Determine what it exactly represents in terms of key concepts.
• Determine which words and combinations of words best describe these key concepts.
• Run a search of all of the popular search engines to determine what word combinations do best under your concept categories.
• Focus on these versions of your key terms in your keywords, title, description and domain name.

What Tags Did Not Make It?

1. A Note About "Spamming"

First a note on "spamming" the search engines. Search engines warn you not to overload their robot with repetitious words to get better placement. Infoseek provides the following, "Attempts to spam or subvert the Infoseek index will result in the exclusion of an entire site and/or domain from the Infoseek index. Repeat violators are subject to legal action."

Alta Vista's site states this, "A small number of sites regularly submit a large number of pages to the AltaVista index in the hope of showing very frequently on our result pages. The usual technique is to submit pages with numerous keywords, or with keywords unrelated to the real content of the pages. Some people submit pages that present our spider with content that differs from what browsers will see. We strongly discourage the use of these techniques.

AltaVista is an index, not a repository for pages of low or misleading informational value. Attempts to fill it with misleading or promotional pages lowers the value of the index for everyone. Left unchecked, this behavior would make Web indexes worthless. We will disallow URL submissions from those who spam the index. In extreme cases, we will exclude all their pages from the index"

Spamming is when you repeat the same word over and over again for better placement. If your site is about meta tags, don't start your keyword tags with, "meta tags, meta tags, meta tags,..." in an attempt to trick the robot into giving you better placement with their service. (Some services count top keywords to determine site relevancy rankings. The theory is if you load up your tags with the same word, that word result will come up higher and you will get better placement.) It is okay however to refer to variances of the term "meta tag" like meta tags, metatag, and metatags. In fact, it is encouraged to better cover the possible search term possibilities.

Heed their advice! First of all, it's "cheating" and you don't want to do that right? Secondly, as you can see above, they mean business. If your site is caught doing that, you will not get placed with that service, regardless of the true relevancy of your web site topic. I have seen sites with relevant domain names not get top placement because their keyword tags used these tactics. Don't make that same mistake. Top placement is a terrible thing to waste.

2. Examples From Sites That Did Not Make It

Here are some examples of tags that didn't make the grade despite the fact that they were for a top magazine, "meta tag" based domain name, and a Basic Meta Tag tutorial.

• Top E-Developer's Mag's Meta Tag Page:
  This article did not have meta tags. They paid the price for it. Out of four top developer's emags, this is the only one that did not see their meta tag page placed in any of the top 10's of the top 10 search engines. So those of you who think tags are not important, perhaps this example proves the point: why take the chance?
• A Site with the term "meta tags" in the domain name:
  This one is a long one. Are you ready? Keywords: meta tags, increase traffic, increase web site traffic, search position, report position, report search ranking, rank, search ranking, optimize, monitor, monitor search, improve search rankings, web marketing, web promotion, web site, search engine, results, advertising, positions, web site promotion, advertising, promotion, businesses, web site, marketing promotions, promoting searches, engines, listings, opportunities, search, listings, web site, traffic, home pages, hits, generator, web site, traffic, yellow pages, classified, advertising, promotional strategies.
  This did not work. First, they repeated words. Perhaps this was an accident but it may have cost them placement at some top search engines so be careful. Secondly, it is far too long for meta tags. If this page of their site is about meta tags, this is what they should list on their tags.

  Now, I believe these tags were meant to represent their entire web site. (You really can find all of that info. at this site through links.) But this page is specifically about meta tags.

  There are two general strategies to doing your tags. One is to use one catch-all set of tags for your whole site, like this one did. The idea behind this is you are trying to increase your potential for top placement throughout the web in all of the subject matters your site represents. The concession is you may lose the potential for focused top placement in the specific category that page represents,like what happened to the above "meta tag" domain name example. (A great domain name is also a terrible thing to waste!)

  Secondly, you can use focused marketing. In focused marketing, you make one primary feature, i.e. meta tags, the focus of your tags, title, and domain name. You may lose the obscure chance of getting listed in another category. But you gain the potential for top placement in the particular category you are emphasizing on.

  To decide what is best for you, you need to determine what is more important. The potential for more listings in general categories related to your site in general. Or, top placement in the specific terms of the page your working on. To make this even more obscure, I should tell you, I have seen both ways suceed and both ways fail. We'll be looking into this more in future editions of Meta Tag Moments - the Meta Tag Channel.

• A Meta Tag Tutorial: I saw a few "Meta Tag 101" /"Meta Tag Basics" out there. None of these scored as high as the Philp's "Meta Tag Short Tutorial" web site. Why was that? Here are the tags from one such web site:
  keywords="metatags, meta, tags, exposure, ranking, (a product name), web, webposition,increase traffic, increase website traffic, registration, submit-it, submissions, search engines, submit-it!, optimize, millenium, monitor search positions, web site promotion, promotion, optimize search positions, improve traffic, INCREASE TRAFFIC, WEBSITE VISIBILITY, INCREASE WEBSITE TRAFFIC, IMPROVE SEARCH POSITIONS, IMPROVE SEARCH RANKINGS, WEB MARKETING, WEB PROMOTION."
  description= (product name) for Windows, Your meta tag machine. Instantly optimizes your website for maximum exposure in the search engines. Be listed at the Top!"

  That just shows you these search engines mean business. When they say meta tags, that is exactly what they are looking for - just meta tags web sites. This site had "meta tags" in the keywords, but not in the description or title. (The description used "meta tag".) This slight variance cost them top placement with top search engines.

Conclusions Drawn from Meta Tag Sample Research

But I also noticed a couple variations you might find interesting. For example, one of the sites that showed up twice in what appeared to be a very competitive field, did so with no meta tags at all. Their title was "meta tag generator". Their site had "meta tags" in the directory name only. (i.e. http://www.name.com/metatags.html). The question I ask you is, "how much did they pay those search engines and where can I sign up?" (Actually, there are search engines where you pay for top listings so I shouldn't joke about that.) Actually, this shows you the importance of a good, descriptive title. In this case, the title was more important than the absent tags.

I also noticed a site that used a different method to get multiple top 10 listings. Meta Magic showed up three times in the top 10's. (4 actually. It showed up twice on one list.) How did they do it? Not through meta tags. They used creative product marketing. Meta Magic let others do the work for them. All three listings had different URLs. This meant that three different web sites were marketing their product. Welcome to the 1990's online version of the good old fashioned brand name marketing in action over the internet. It worked. You have to figure, if enough people are trying to sell your product over the internet, at least one is going to hit the top 10. Or, in Meta Magic's case, at least 4 are going to hit the top 10.

This is quite effective. In the case of product marketing, repetitious product marketing sells your product. If your audience sees the term "meta magic" showing up all over the place on the internet, the inference they will draw is that this is a popular meta tags product. This inference translates into more sales for you. So Meta Magic has proven that there is more than one way to hit the top. Tags are important, but Meta Magic has proven that multiple listings are another method of increasing your potential for top listings.

I also noticed that some of the big names in overall site promotion and meta tags were not listed in the top 10s. How can this be? The answer is their tags were focused on their overall promotions site, instead of the meta tag specific page contained within their site. In one case, the top web site did not have meta tags at all on their meta tags page.

What may be more effective? If a general purpose site wants specific placement in one category, i.e. meta tags, it should focus exclusively on meta tags in its top keywords, titles, descriptions, and domain name. Let your overall site name or cover page sell your main site concepts. Use your specialized pages to focus on top placement of that key concept. For example, if you have a meta tag generator on your promotions site, submit that page separately using a "meta tags" focused submissions campaign instead of your generic promotions package. This may increase your sites overall potential for top placement as well. (If your page makes it, people will see your whole site when they visit that page. If your pages keep hitting top 10, people will continue to see your sites name re-appearing in specific top 10's. This may be very persuasive.)

III. Who's Got First in the Meta Tag Game?

1. Hot Bot: "Maxweb Active Server Pages Web Host and Design" (Meta Magic was #2)
2. Excite: Meta Tag Implementation ("All About Home Page Advertising, Registration and Linking")
3. Alta Vista: The first result was in another language. (Philb.com's Meta Tags was #2)
4. Web Crawler: Meta Tags: A Guide to the Meta Tag (Search Engine's Watch was #2)
5. GOTO: How to win the Search Engine Game by searchenginebook.com (Register-It.com Was #2 with "Search Engine Registration and Promotion")
6. Lycos: Meta Tag Java Applets Web Design Free Stuff Tips (Meta Tag Machine.Com was #2)
7. Yahoo: Search Engine Watch's "How to Use Meta Tags" (Meta Tags 101 by Designmaker.com was #2)
8. MiningCo: Meta Tag Generator by Web Site Promote (infospider.com was #2)
9. AOL's Net Find: Net Promote/Meta Tags (Meta Tags by europe.cnn.fn.com was #2)
10. Snap: Virtual Promote (Advanced HTML - Geocities.com was #2)
11. Northern Light: Megatrends2000.com (Search Watch's article was #2)
12. Galaxy: a Swedish Site was #1 (Meta Tag Machine was #2)

    As you can see, where Search Engine Watch did place, they placed well! What tags did they use?
    Keywords: data MCFRDF how to use meta tags help keywords what is a meta tag description.
    Description A primer on how to use meta tags without experience or code and links to additional resources.

    Some Notes on Search Engines

    Please understand that when submitting your site, each search engine will catalog your site differently. For example, places like Yahoo and Look Smart ask you to submit your site in individual page directories. These are called directory sites. They mainly catalog sites by directory lists. Other sites like Infoseek and Excite catalog by your URL, Uniform Resource Locator or site address instead. At these places, you are only required to list your URL and your contact email address.

    When listing your site, keep this in mind, directory listings are different from search engine listings. Some search engines search your site for the desired keywords entered by the searcher in close concession to each other. The closer the words are together in places like your keywords, title, and description, and the more search terms that show up in these areas and on your web site, the more relevancy your site will get over others. It is all mechanical.

    For example, if your search is for "top meta tag keywords" and ABC's web site's keywords are, "meta tag,...top placement,....keywords, description...", the engine will pick up that all keywords are present. If your listing of these words are closer together than every other site, you will get more relevancy points. The amount of these keywords that show up can also be relevant. Consequently, it is very important for you to list all possible combinations of the possible search terms that can be conducted by your audience so your site will get listed properly.

    The examples above show the importance of quality tags and titles. Also consider the importance of covering every variation of your key terms, especially for search engine sites that rely on meta tag. Any of the sites above may have hit the top under "meta tags", but how would they have faired under a search for "meta tag"? Just as many searchers may use the singular as the plural. If you don't include the singular/plural variations, you could lose half of your potential market.

    In the directory-based listing services, this can get a little confusing. They usually list sites alphabetically. So for the directory side, it is more important to have a catchy and appealing description, because your placement cannot be altered. However, on the search engine side, you still have to load up your precious few tags and description words with key potential search terms. The key is to find the perfect balance or decide what is more important to you: an appealing description for the directory listings or the potential for more top placement under the search portion of the site.

    Of the search engines, Yahoo seemed to have the most relevant list, with every entry being a relevant meta tags site that has shown up on the other pages as well. (A few of the search engines brought up some irrelevant sites along with the relevant listings. I believe they are working on this. Hopefully, this will cease to be a problem. A few of the sites were impressively international in scope, even bringing up sites in other languages from other countries. I believe this is called "welcome to the global economy".

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    IV. Some Closing Comments and Meta Tag Help Info.

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    Well, I hope this information helped. If you want more information on where to go for meta tag tools, see the Meta Tags Directory . If you want meta tag and title optimization tests conducted on your site, see Azurii Designs . If you want informaton about what top search engines are looking for, see Search Engines Submit Chart . If you want information on where to go for professional submissions assistance, see the Submissions Agent Chart . If you need books on online promotions specific topics, see PromoShop. If you want more promotions information, see PromoNet.

    Good Luck and Happy Meta Tagging.

    Sincerely,
    Azurii

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    Please continue to watch this page for updates. If you have questions regarding this page or wish to submit your URL for consideration, please send an email to azurii@yahoo.com . If you are submitting a URL, indicate which page you would prefer it to be listed. Also include a description and keywords if your URL lacks meta tags.
    
    Created at Creative Connection

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    Copyright : © Azurii Designs , 2/99, All Rights Reserved.

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