Issues to be considered

Meta tags are best applied to your homepage - other pages, such as the main pages for projects or particular sections such as course modules could be also be considered. When choosing keywords only use those that relate directly to the page to which you are adding meta tags. A short, accurate description of the site will also help if two pages both receive a similar ranking. It's also worth having another look at your page titles as these feature as the text of the link and are second in importance when the search engine builds the index.

If you want to read more on meta tags and search engines in general, the best starting point is Search Engine Watch maintained by Danny Sullivan. The URL is: http://www.searchenginewatch.com/.

More detailed information on the different types of meta tags is available at http://vancouver-webpages.com/META/ but remember that only keywords, description and robots are the commonly supported meta tags.

Among the links on the Search Engine Watch pages is one to legal cases that have arisen when people have included meta tag keywords for other companies in their pages. This is often a deliberate attempt to use the popularity of a famous brand to help lift another firm's homepage up the search engine rankings but do consider what keywords you use.

The effects of adding your meta data won't appear as soon as you publish. The LSE search engine only indexes the site every weekday evening but if you search the School site the next day, you should see a change in your results ranking.

See Adding a search form for instructions on how to include search forms in your website - and the results can be restricted to only your pages. Limiting the scope of a visitor's search is another method of ensuring that the results they receive back are as accurate as possible.

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