Well, we’ve known about these meta-things for some time, but just haven’t really figured out what to do about them or who would be responsible for fixing them.”

If you’ve ever heard Danny Sullivan, the editor of Search Engine Watch (www.searchenginewatch.com), give a speech, you know he has a great sense of humor.

He has this META tag spiel that likens people’s understanding of META tags to those late-night get-rich-quick infomercials: “All right, I’m going to show you how, by placing tiny bits of text in all of your Web pages, you can cause millionsand millions of people to race to your Web site. YES, just by understanding THESE tiny bits of text, THESE hidden pieces of code, you can drive MILLIONS and MILLIONS of visitors to your Web site and earn MILLIONS and MILLIONS of dollars . . .FROM HOME!”

The point is, META tags are not mysterious. In fact, as far as SEP is concerned, META tags are the oldest and most elementary component of search engine optimization, and many search engines no longer weigh them heavily in determining a Web site’s relevance to searches.

The actual META tag is merely a place to insert “metadata.” Metadata is simply data that describes other data. This is the site designer’s opportunity to tell the search engine — or anyone else who cares to sneak a peek at the Web site’s source code — what their document is about.

This chapter discusses all potential metadata — not just the actual META tags — including how to construct and use META tags and find the many other places in your site’s HTML that search engines look for keywords and phrases.

Remember: If search engines had their way, an independent third party would assign all metadata. Search engines have found that much of the self-assigned metadata that is included in Web sites by site owners and designers is unreliable.

This means that there are Web site designers out there who think, “Well, I know I’m selling ‘car parts,’ but more people are searching for ‘The Beatles,’ so I’ll add ‘The Beatles’ to my keyword META tag so that I’ll attract more visitors.” Is it any wonder that search engines pay little attention to self-assigned metadata?

As you can see, metadata is really just a way of “amplifying” the keyword content of your page and tilting its relevancy toward one keyword over another. For instance, your page may talk about record albums, CDs, and audio cassettes.

If “audio cassettes” is really just an ancillary topic on your Web page, you should avoid amplifying that keyword by placing a copy of it in your META tags. If your Web site does talk about audio cassettes in some depth, you should place it in your metadata and META tags. The bottom line: If amplifying a phrase in your metadata causes your Web site to be returned in searches that do not attract interested parties, don’t target that phrase in your metadata.

The classic search engines such as AltaVista and Excite send automated software spiders to capture all of the text that it can read on a Web page.