SEO Meta Tags and Increasing Web Traffic

Among search engine optimization tips, I've heard that the use of meta tags can help search engines more easily categorize a website, thereby increasing web traffic. Meta tags contain the title, concise description and keywords of the page. There are several sources of free meta tag builders. I used the one from ScrubTheWeb to create this meta tag:

< .head>
< .meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
< .title>Learn to Increase Passive Income Online< ./title>
< .meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en" />
< .meta name="description" content="Increase passive income online by implementing relevant strategies and tools." />
< .meta name="keywords" content="search engine optimization tips, search engine strategies, earn money on the Internet, increasing web traffic, make money on the net" />
< .!-- Meta Tags Created With: STW Meta Tag Builder http://www.scrubtheweb.com/abs/ -->
< ./head>


(The only way I could get these meta tags to be visible was to insert two spaces and a period right after each < Otherwise, the tags disappeared when I previewed the post.)

However, it turns out that the major search engines really don't use the meta tags, so there's little advantage to adding them to your page's code. Quality of content is much more important. Here are three reasons why I'm not adding meta tags:

1. This blog is written on one of the templates of Google's Blogger, and such templates are difficult to alter, as I have found;
2. Google's search engine, among others, doesn't pay much attention to meta tags anyway, as mentioned above;
3. Inserting extra code can cause the page to load more slowly and thus provide a less enjoyable experience for readers.

OK, I've got to go back and focus on getting backlinks for my articles -- something that definitely will be giving them better ratings and increasing web traffic. Before the takeover of eHow by Demand Studios, several eHow friends and I took turns finding places to backlink each others' articles. To date, here are the articles of mine that have been backlinked:

How to Water an African Violet was backlinked by a friend at
http://www.xomba.com/how_water_african_violet

I also backlinked this article on two African violet groups' Facebook pages. Because the content of the Facebook groups' pages is relevant to the article's topic, those two backlinks are more valuable than that from Xomba, but that one helps, too. Most articles on the Internet don't have any backlinks; so three backlinks for this article make it look more important, among the group of articles that can be found on this topic, to search engines.

How to Remove Wrinkles Without Using an Iron or Steam
http://ihaveanotion.blogspot.com/2010/01/digital-velocity-steam-iron-v100-by.html
http://thisridiculousworld.com/china/blockage-30032010/comment-page-1/#comment-647

How to Write a Useful Obituary
http://www.innovativepassiveincome.com/invest-in-real-estate-a-little-a-time/

How to Tie Shoelaces to be Secure and Easily Untied
http://shetoldme.com/Lifestyle/How-to-Tie-Shoelaces-the-Old-fashioned-Way

How to Rinse Your Nasal Passages to Avoid Flu
http://shetoldme.com/Health/How-to-Properly-Rinse-Nasal-Passages

How to Take Care of Someone who has H1N1 Swine Flu
http://shetoldme.com/Health/How-to-Care-for-a-Person-with-Swine-Flu-H1N1

How to Stop Cold Drafts Through Electrical Outlets
http://shetoldme.com/Lifestyle/How-to-Stop-Drafts-Through-Electrical-Outlets

How to Become an Organ, Eye and Tissue Donor
http://twitter.com/PoloPony95/status/11672137589

I backlinked that article in two other places:
http://shetoldme.com/Health/How-to-Become-an-Organ-Eye-and-Tissue-Donor
http://www.xomba.com/how_become_organ_eye_and_tissue_donor


For these eight articles, I have provided links to the original articles as well as to the web pages where their backlinks are found. Not only is this a convenience to you, to see the articles and how to set up corresponding backlinks, but I have also created another backlink to each article and to each article's backlink source. Thus, the article first on the list, How to Water an African Violet, has a two-level backlink chain; the article is backlinked at Xomba, and the Xomba article is backlinked here.


The majority of my articles do not have backlinks outside of eHow. When two or more of my articles were related -- such as those I wrote on the topic of African violets -- the resource section of each African violet article backlinked the other African violet articles.

Thoughts? Questions? Recommendations?


By the way, last night I submitted this URL to Yahoo! and to Bing search engines.
I've no idea why all article links are not the same color. When I've gone back to highlight and change the color to match the others, the result is still not what I intended. ??