Meta Tag Tips for Free Sites

[MrYum]

Following up on my previous thread about templates, thought I'd post up some tips about free site meta tags (since I see them ABUSED or IGNORED so often).

First is the debate on whether it's even worthwhile to use metas on free sites. Well, I for one believe that it most certainly is worth your time. While free sites may not get a lot of search engine traffic, for the few extra seconds it takes to put the metas on your pages...you may just be rewarded with some nice 4 or 5 word keyterm results in the engines.

Another reason to use your metas is that I see a bunch of free sites showing up in google with their warning text spidered as the description. This usually is the result of the spider using the first text on the page, since no meta description tag was used on the site...not a good thing.

So, with all that said;

Meta: "title" - Give your site a unique title and make sure this title appears on your page (many reviewers automatically decline sites with no title on the page). Don't use the paysite title in your title meta...again, some reviewers will automatically dump your site for this practice as it doesn't describe YOUR site, it describes the paysite.

Advanced - Smart free site builders actually change the title meta on every page of the free site. This gives you even more chances of grabbing some more obscure on longer keyterms in the search engines.

Meta: "meta name="description" content="An accurate description of YOUR site"" - As it says, this should be an accurate description of the content found on YOUR site, NOT the paysite you're promoting. For one thing, if you use the paysite description, think of the thousands of others using the same description...this provides zero unique terms about your site for the search engines.

Advanced - Much like the title meta, this is a great place to stir up your description of what's actually on your site. Be creative, but also be accurate. It's a great place to use some other keyterms that also describe your site...think synonyms...hint!

Meta: "meta name="keywords" content="keywords that actually describe what's found on your site"" - This has to be the most abused meta in the biz...poor thing! I see so many submitters absolutely packing this meta with dozens to hundreds (NO exaggeration!) of keyterms. If a reviewer has a reason to view the source code (some do this automatically), and sees an overstuffed keyword meta...your site is very likely to be dumped. Like the other metas, keep your keyterms relevant to YOUR site...and don't over do it. 3 and 4 or even 5 word combinations are great, because those terms aren't as highly targeted by the big players in the search engines, but enough of these can garner you some sweet highly targeted SE traffic.

Anther rule of thumb is to never use the same word more than 3 times in the keywords meta...meaning: sex, hot sex, amateur sex...would be 3 times for the word 'sex'. Also, you want to make sure the keyterms you use actually appear on the page...otherwise, they provide no relevance to the engines.

Personally, I like to separate meta keyterms with a comma, some agree with that practice...some don't.

Example for an amateur site:
Equates to three uses of the word 'amateur'.

Again, don't OVER DO it! A few keyterms that actually appear on the page is much better than 20 keyterms that have no relevance to your site.

Do search engines actually look at metas these days? That subject is up to debate, but that's not the point of this post. The point IS...you've got nothing to lose by properly using metas, and everything to gain

Sorry for the lack of <> on those metas, but some boards don't see to take well to having metas posted on the board