Search Engine Secrets: Using Tags
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Search Engine Secrets: Using Tags
by: Mark Lawson
In your web pages, there are hidden areas of the page that the casual browser doesn’t see, but that the search engines sure do. These are called tags, and come in two basic types: first the header tags, which are found at the top of web pages, and second the heading tags, which mark the parts of your text in the page that will be used as titles and subtitles in articles. One other form of tag, alternate text, should be filled out as well.
Header Tags
Most of the tags in your header are called metatags or meta tags; they apply to the entire page and, in HTML, are at the top of your document. In graphic web page design tools like Frontpage or Dreamweaver, if you right-click and select page properties, you’ll find these in the first tab that opens.
When the web first opened to the public, metatags were a critical tool enabling the primitive spiders and search engines of that time to determine how to catalog a page. The idea was that you’d tell the spiders where your page was supposed to be catalogued by how you filled in your metatags, and they’d ensure you were listed properly.
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