24 - CLUB

Before we start lets first see how search engines work.

How Search Engines Work
When you type in a list of words into a search box such as Hotbot or AltaVista, to find a list of websites, some (not all) will use the Meta Tags within each Web page to give you the corresponding sites to the words that you typed. This is known as Meta Tag extraction. Meta Tags are situated between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> statement within each HTML document.

example:

This obviously has many draw backs as it is down to the Webmaster to decided which Meta Tags are to be used in his/her Web page. This is typically why you get Fred's lunch box website in a top 10 listing of a search phrase for pillow cases.

So search engines now utilize other tactics to spider (list and catalogue) your website. Some such as Yahoo are classified as Directories. This means that a human will actually add your site to the appropriate category.

How to use Meta Keywords
Okay lets crack on to the important part of this guide. Firstly you as the Webmaster need to establish what your website is about and to whom it will appeal to. You will need to sit down and write a list of words which best suit your site. Try to think of words which other people will type into a search box.

example: Your website is about music and mainly concentrates on the sixties era.

Keywords to consider are: music, sixties music, 60s music, music from the sixties, sixties bands, bands from the sixties, the swinging sixties, the beatles, the rolling stones, the stones.

As you can see the key is to include keywords that people might search for. So be specific and add as many as you can think off. Generally though you need to only add about 25 keywords and ensure that your top priority keywords are at the beginning. You can get penalized for having to many Keywords or repeating the same word to many times.

Installing your Meta Keywords
Now that you have your list of keywords you will need to add them to your Web pages. This is a simple task and one which you will benefit from.

1. Open up your favorite HTML editor such as Notepad or FrontPage 2000.
2. View the HTML code.
3. Find the <HEAD> tag. This is at the very top of the page.
4. Add a line below the <HEAD> tag called <meta name="keywords" content="">.
5. Between the "" add your keywords. Place a comma after each keyword. It is best to use all lower case letters.
6. It should now look something like this