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For customers choosing the Platinum or Diamond package, Imbris will submit your domain, in one category, to all the major search engines free of charge. In order to take advantage of this free service we need to know your category of choice and have a TITLE tag and the following META tags configured into your "home" page.

TITLE Tag

In your <TITLE> tag, include a description of your page, along with your organization and/or product name. The <TITLE> tag should be 5-15 words in length.

Meta Description Tag

The meta description tag is used to assist those search engines which are meta capable in summarizing your website. The size of the meta description tag should be under 200 characters (approximately 25 words).

The basic html format of the meta description tag is;

<meta name="description" content="sample webpage description">

Here are a couple of actual sample tags;

<meta name="description" content=" Streaming Internet Radio. New bands with talent. Come visit LoudPlanet.com Get the latest in music before it even comes out. Latest in technology ...">

Meta Keywords Tag

The keywords tag is used by the meta capable search engines to help aid them in indexing your website. This is important, the search engines use this information to determine under what queries your website will come up under. Repetition in your META Keywords tag can cause search engines to stop indexing your keywords.

The basic html format of the meta keyword tag is;

<meta name="keywords" content="keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 ...">

or

<meta name="keywords" content="keyword1, keyword2, keyword3, ...">

Note that these tags are functionally equal. Inclusion of commas does inflate the basic tag size, so they can be removed if you are hovering around the limit. Including them does have the effect of making the tag that much more readable however.

Robots Meta tag

The primary purpose behind the robots meta tag is to control which pages get indexed and which do not. For example many websites offer deep pages within their site which probably wouldn't make any sense if they were indexed. This is especially true in framed sites where not all of the pages may contain the necessary navigational information. You certainly do not want your visitors to pop into your site on a page they are unable to navigate from.

The format for the robots command is as follows;

<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="index | noindex | follow | nofollow">

For example, on your main page, you might want to have the search engines index all of the pages, therefore you would use a command of;

<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="index follow">

This command instructs the robot to read the index file on your site, and then schedule any urls it locates on that page for further spidering. On a page which you don't want indexed, you would have the following;

<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="noindex nofollow">

This tells the spider not to index the page, nor follow any links which they might find.

Summary

With care, it is possible to refine your tags to more closely match your intended audience, in effect, targeting your tags. Building a set of meta tags is simple. Building a good set of meta tags which work for you is an altogether different matter. Before you whip out a set of tags, STOP! Your summary and title tag need to work together. In essence, the title of your website should draw the viewer into reading the summary and the summary should draw the viewer into clicking on the link.

Your title is where you first attempt to build name recognition on the behalf of your website/product/service. Omitting a title tag, on any page, but most importantly on the opening page, is the kiss of death for a website. Most people won't even read the summary if the title doesn't give them some inkling of whats on the page. All pages should contain a title to them. Frame Users, this holds true for you as well, do not forget the people using a non-frame capable browser who will see a title of "Insert Title Here" or some such silliness.

As noted earlier, the title and summary should flow together. The title can identify the site, then allow the summary to describe it.

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