>From today's InternetDay: The use of Meta Tags doesn't GUARANTEE a good placement in the search engines, but if you don't build into your site the basic fundamentals that the search engines look for, then don't be too surprised if you don't get a good placement. Millions of people use search engines to find the product or service they are looking for. If you are not in the search engines, and if you are not placed well in the search engines, then you are leaving the spoils to your competition. Meta Tags are there to substantiate and to highlight the content on your page. It's as if you are telling the search engines: "Here are my most important concepts. When someone does a search on these KeyWords or phrases, I've got them covered on my page". Of course, if the search engines can't find any content to match those keywords, then they're meaningless. And if the KeyWords are found in your content but they aren't in a prominent place on your page (i.e. the top) then the search engines assume that they are less important, and assign a lesser value. That having been said, here's an approach that you may wish to consider using when developing your KeyWords. � Create a spread sheet with two columns - Hot List and Content � Identify 3 to 5 of the MOST LIKELY words or phrases that you would expect visitors to use, in the search engines, to find your product or service. Add these words to your spread sheet under "Hot List". � In Alta Vista, Excite, HotBot and Infoseek do a search on your Hot List words or phrases and identify the top 10 pages that show up in each search engine, for each word. � View the source code for each page (right click on your mouse & select "view source"). If they have KeyWord Meta Tags and Description MetaTags look to see if they have any great keywords or phrases that you may have overlooked. Add them to your "Hot List". � Next, get a text editor that allows you to count the number of words on your web page as well as sort them by the number of repetitions. Check out Note Tab if you don't have such a text editor. They have a freeware version available. � Run the editor on your web page to identify what words appear in your content. Since you have them on your page, presumably they must be important. � Compare this list with your Hot List and check off (in the Content Column) what words already appear on your page. Here is the critical concept: The KeyWord Meta Tags MUST bear some relation to your content. So there is no sense writing a Meta Tag with words that do not appear on your page. They're superfluous. Phrase Exception: Let's say that your page has something to do with baseball, then one of the key word phrases might be "baseball bat". Now even though "bat" doesn't appear in your content, a search on "baseball bat" may find your page (because "baseball" is part of your content) but a search on "bat" will not (because "bat" it is not part of your content). So now you have two choices. You can create KeyWords Meta Tags, between 800 to 1000 characters, based on what you already have on your page or you can re-write your page to get in some of the Hot List words that you identified above into your Content. Spamming rules: Search engines are becoming increasingly sophisticated in detecting efforts to subvert the search engine ranking process. The standard for repeating words in your KeyWord Meta Tag appears to be a low of 3 and a high of 6. You can decide for yourself how aggressive you want to be. We recommend a conservative approach and suggest that you not repeat words more than three times in your KeyWord Meta Tag. This entire exercise has been to create Meta Tags that validate the material and content on your page. But also vitally important is the physical placement of your content. Search engines will assume that content that appears at the top of the page, or as close as possible to the top, is more relevant than material at the bottom of the page. Consequently, wherever possible, try to get your content (words - NOT images or Java) that uses some of the KeyWords as close to the top of the page as possible. And we mean within the first 1,000 to 2,000 characters in your Body Tag, including any and all formatting characters. The bottom line is simply that if you want your page to be found in the search engines, it requires that your page be "search engine ready". More than 90% of the sites that we review are not optimized properly for search engines. (LeMaze included &hellip but we are working on it). But here is the good news: those that do optimize their site are automatically ahead of 90% of their competition. If you aren't listed, or aren't listed well, and you expect to do business on the net, you may wish to do something about it. Good Luck with your site! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Article by Len Canning, founder of the popular LeMaze Resource Center . LeMaze was created to provide a one-stop resource center for those who do business on the net. Their goal is to provide a wealth of marketing, promotional and web development material for the internet community. Currently LaMaze lists in excess of 14,000 resources. 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