Header tags are also called meta tags. I call them header tags because they appear between the < head > and < /head > tags in your html source document. There are three of them that you need to concern yourself when it comes to your Search Engine Optimization efforts.

Here’s what they are:

• TITLE
• DESCRIPTION
• KEYWORDS

First of all, these tags are important for Search Engine Optimization reasons. Your title and description tags will actually appear on the search engine results pages when your site is found for a particular query. The title tag is the first thing that searchers will see on the results page. It is also a link that when clicked takes the searcher to your website. That’s pretty important, right?

The description tag is often used as your snippet below the title link in the results page. If you optimize both your title and your description tag with your important keywords then you will increase your chances of ranking highly in the search engine results pages for those keywords.

The keywords tag is the least important of the three, but it’s still relatively important. Most beginning webmasters will make the mistake of adding every keyword important to their website to the keywords tag. You don’t want to do that. You only want to include 3-5 important keywords per page in that keywords meta tag. If a word doesn’t appear on a page, even if it’s important to your website as a whole, don’t include it in your keywords tag. It won’t help you.

Those are the three header tags that you need to pay attention to. They are not the be all end all to search engine optimization, but without the header tags you will struggle in the search engine results page.

In September this year, Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land wrote a long post on the use of the keywords meta tag on web pages. It’s the only article you ever need to read on keywords meta tags. I’m just going to mention three specific things that I found helpful in the article, namely:

• Which search engines support them (and which ones don’t)
• Whether to use commas or spaces
• Are they really necessary?

Is The Keywords Meta Tag Necessary?
I’ll deal with this question first. The bottom line on the keywords meta tag is no, it’s not necessary. Yes, it is helpful sometimes. Do it right and it’ll give you a slight edge. Do it wrong and it’ll be a big, ugly, painful thorn in your side. Quite frankly, the risk of of using the keywords meta tag is bigger than the risk of not using it. Danny said it more eloquently, I think:

Overall, here’s the best advice I can offer anyone dealing with this tag. If you begin to feel confused, concern, tired or uncertain when pondering it, SKIP THE TAG ENTIRELY. It’s not going to hurt you to not have it, and it’s not worth the time fretting about it.

So Which Search Engines Support The Keywords Meta Tag?
That’s a good question. Danny tells a story of an experiment he conducted using fake keywords to see which search engines would retrieve his pages for those keywords in their results pages. His findings match my own experience in this area and this is essentially what he found:

• Google doesn’t support the keywords meta tag
• MSN doesn’t support it
• Yahoo does support it
• Ask supports it

Google, as we all know, get the lion’s share of search traffic online - around 60%. Yahoo! picks up around 15%-25% of the search traffic online, depending on whose figures you believe. MSN grabs a cool 7%-15% and Ask hovers around 4%-7%. (I’m giving windows of latitude here because everyone has their own figures depending on how they weigh search traffic. It doesn’t really matter for this discussion how accurate the numbers are. What matters is that Google is overwhelmingly the largest tool for search and Yahoo! is next. After that, MSNs and Ask’s search traffic percentages are too insignificant to worry about whether you should incorporate the meta tag into your web pages. Google’s and Yahoo!s, however, are. So in the context of this discussion, your keywords meta tag is important at 50% of the search engines.)

If the target market you are trying to reach is more likely to make searches at Yahoo! than Google then you probably want to put more weight on the keyword meta tag. If Google, then I’d say put less importance on the keyword meta tag, if at all. If your target market is more likely to use MSN then don’t worry about it. If your target market is likely to use either Yahoo! or MSN, or Yahoo! or Google, then use it if you think it will help. You can always fall back on Danny Sullivan’s helpful advice to ignore it altogether if you’re confused.

Should the Keyword Meta Tag Include Commas Or Spaces?
Danny goes through great detail to explain this. I’d recommend you read his article. I’m just going to say go with commas because it seems to make the most sense. Yahoo! quality guidelines say to use commas to make a distinction between specific search phrases. I’d have to say I wholly agree with this statement.

Then there are the people who say put a space after the comma and those who argue don’t put a space after the comma (yes, people really argue about that). I can’t see that there’s any difference. It looks better with the spaces, but what matters is the results you’ll get. I don’t think you’ll get any different results either way. Danny doesn’t seem to think so either.

When it comes to your keywords meta tag, it will hurt you more to do it wrong than it will ever help you to do it right. Therefore, if you aren’t sure that you’re doing it right then don’t include keywords< in that meta tag at all.

The natural protocol for search engine robots when they crawl your pages is to index the page and follow all links. All major search engines will follow this protocol unless you tell them not to. Here are some helpful robot meta tags that you might use in order to give specific instructions to the search engines crawling your pages:

meta name=”robots” content=” …” - This meta tag is addressed to all search engines and whatever instructions you give will be followed by all the search engines.

meta name=”googlebot” content=” …” - Only Google will pay attention to this tag.

meta name=”msnbot” content=” …” - Specifies instructions intended only for MSN Live and not other search engines.

meta name=”yahoobot” content=” …” - Instructions specific to Yahoo!

Inside the content=” …” attribute of the meta robot tag, you’ll want to include the following phrases to give specific instructions on how to read, index, or treat content and links on your web pages:

noindex: Tells the search engines not to index a specific page. Your page should not appear in any search engine SERPs if you use this tag with the robots meta. If you use it with googlebot then Google will not index it but other search engines will.

nofollow: This attribute tells the search engines not to follow the links on your page and crawl the pages that you are linking to.

nosnippet: This attribute instructs the search engines to remove the snippets from the SERPs. Whether your snippet (description) is coming from your web page or ODP is irrelevant. This attribute says “Don’t use a snippet at all.”

noodp: This attribute tells the search engines not to use the Open Directory Project (ODP, aka DMOZ) for creating the snippet in the SERPs.

noydir: This is a Yahoo! specific robots tag and tells the robots not to create a Yahoo! titles and snippets in the Yahoo! directory.

noarchive: This attribute tells the robots not to cache a web page or archive it at all.

unavailable_after:[insert date here]: This attribute tells the search engines to remove an indexed page after a specific date.

These robot meta tags can be used in your robots.txt template to instruct the search engines on specific ways to treat your web pages. Be careful in using these and if you want only a specific search engine to respond to your orders you’ll need to include your instructions specifically for that search engine so you wouldn’t use the robots meta tag but the tag specifically for the search engine you want to address.

You’ve likely heard that you need to add meta tags to every page of your website. There are some things you need to know about meta tags before you write them (and they are very important).

First, DO NOT - I repeat, DO NOT - create the same meta tags for every single page on your website. That will not fair well for you at the search enignes. Some CMS systems (Joomla comes to mind) will automatically generate your meta tags for you, but most of the time these automatically generated meta tags will be the same meta tags on every page. If that’s the case, you’d be better off without meta tags.

When I speak of meta tags in this manner, I am specifically talking about title, description, and keywords meta tags. Let’s discuss these one at a time:

Title Meta Tag

The title meta tag is the tag that generates what visitors will see in the top left corner of their browser when they are on your page. You want that title meta tag to use your important keyword - that’s the most important keywords for that particular web page - not the website. Make sure it uses the most important keyword for that page (i.e. the most often used keyword). Do not leave this meta tag field blank. It is also the verbiage that searchers will see in the search engines whenever the SERP comes up for the search they make. It is quite possible that if you do not have a title meta tag then you will never come up in a SERP.

Description Meta Tag

The description meta tag is what appears below the title tag in the SERPs when searchers find your website in the search engines. A carefully worded description can encourage the click through. Keep that in mind. Use your keyword at least once but not more than twice. If you want to optimize your description for more than one keyword then do so for each keyword only once and do not use more than two keywords. You only have a limited amount of space (about 50 words) to write a dynamic, click-encouraging description meta tag.You don’t necessarily NEED a description meta tag, however. Still, I would not leave it blank. If you don’t have a description meta tag then Google will likely take the description that is used for your DMOZ listing. If you don’t have a DMOZ listing and you don’t write a description meta tag then you may be SOL - appearing in a SERP with nothing that says “click me” below your title link. That would be quite sad.On another note, DMOZ editors may write your DMOZ description for you (assuming they approve your listing). You really don’t want your site at being described by someone else at the search engines, do you? Thought not. Write your own description meta tag and make sure it is written with the click-through in mind.

Keywords Meta Tag

The keyword meta tag is the easiest to screw up. Do it wrong and it will hurt you. Do it right and it has more potential to help you than the other two meta tags. It’s not the most important meta tag, but it is the most vital. I say it’s not the most important because you can get by without entering any keywords into that meta tag and the search engines will likely rank your pages according to the content on your page (which they consider more important any way). So you won’t lose anything at all by not entering keywords into the keyword meta tag.Oh, but enter the wrong keywords and you could be considered a spammer and get penalized. For instance, if you enter a keyword that is important for your site overall, but that particular word doesn’t appear on this particular web page even one single time then that could count against you. Don’t let that happen.The easiest and safest way to generate a keyword list for each page is to write the content then check the keyword density of the page. Use a keyword density analyzer and select only the most used keywords that actually appear in the content of that page. If a keyword doesn’t appear on a page at least four times or at a minimum of 2% keyword density then don’t add it to your keyword list in the meta tag.

Are Meta Tags Important?

Yes, meta tags are vitally important. Each one is important in a different way and with different intensities. I’d say the keyword meta tag is least important while the title and description tags are equally the most important, but for different reasons. Don’t use the right keyword in your title meta tag and you won’t get the targeted traffic you’re looking for. Don’t write the description meta tag just write and no one will click on your SERP listings. Put too many keywords in your keyword meta tag (or the wrong ones) and you’ll be a spammer. The dangers are real, but the benefits are just as real. Keep that in mind.