Do you have to put meta tags on all your webpages or just the home page. and also how does like Google know which page is your HOME page anyway. BLAH help?

Answer 1

The MOST important thing is to make sure you have GOOD or excellent page TITLES. Each page title should be different.It's not necessary to put meta tags on all or any of your pages to improve search engine rankings. Meta tags were used and rely on heavily in the early days of search engines, however, search engine algorithms or bots are more sophisticated in determining which sites should rank high. Right now search engines like Google and Yahoo place more weight on things like page text (content, Alt tags), relevance and quality of inbound links. For example: if you sell jewellery on-line a inbound link from KAY jewellers would carry more weight in Google and Yahoo search engines, in-terms of ranking. Search engines today, no longer have to rely on Meta tags inserted in HTML head pages to determine what pages are about and what their importance should be to searchers.

HOWEVER, despite the fact that meta tags has lost its effectiveness over the years, it is still useful for some search engines today. As a matter of fact Google search engine still see relevance in the description tag. The description tag is particularly handy for controlling how your link will appear. Here you want to use 12 to 15 words that describe the content of your page, preferably using the same collection of words and phrases that can be found in your main body of text. This again should change from page to page depending on content.

The biggest downfall for meta tags is the "keywords" tag. It seems their usefulness has all but disappeared but they won't harm your site so you might as well include a few. I am including them right now in a new website I am working on. I don't think I will ever completely stop using Meta Tags in my web pages. Finally, Google will know what page is your home page in several ways. Example: I name my website home page "default.asp" some people use .htm or .php and so on. When you sign up with Google or submit a sitemap to Google you should be able to specify the main pages you want Google bots to crawl and how often. Some good third party mods will allow you to do just that.