Meta Tags- The End of The Line

Ever wonder how a search engine spider (SES) analyses your website for indexing? The concept is really quite simple and although there are hundreds (possibly thousands) of search engine spiders on the web they all use the same basic method to index the content of your site. The “keyword” to search engine spiders is “Line-Ending.” When a SES visits a website, it opens each web page and analyses it line by line. For any content to be indexed by the SES, it must be recognizable by the SES. META tags are the most common lines recognized by search engine spiders. However they are also the most commonly mis-written lines of code on the web.

For a META tag to be recognizable by a SES, it MUST be on a single line. Any carriage returns/line feeds will render the META tag “invisible” and therefore useless. Visit your website and “View Source” in your web browser. Are your META tags visible to the search engine spiders? By ensuring your META tags are each on a single line you’ll be effectively increasing the “indexability” of your website by 100%!