meta tags to optimise searching for a website

[delayed]

can anyone advise please and bearing in mind i am a total novice..my sister has opened a small health food shop specialising in foods for people with food allergies such as gluten/wheat free ect.we are using moonfruit.com which offers a free site where such as google will have their ads along side.i have read about putting meta tags to help with search engines. and have tried to add a few going from the view button and then to the source but when i add them and save i go back and they have not been added.as i said i am a total novice and would appreciate any advise or any webs that i could read to learn more..
thanks in anticipation denise

[squarebear]

What software are you using to create your webpages?

If you View - Source on this webpage it will show you a line like this:

<meta name="keywords" content="ad, add, ads, advise, allergies, along, am, anyone, bearing, button, com, ect, engines, few, food, foods, free, glutenwheat, going, google, health, help, meta, mind, moonfruit, novice, offers, opened, optimise, people, please, putting, read, search, searching, shop, side, sister, site, small, source, specialising, tags, total, tried, using, view, website, when, will."/>

which is total overkill but that's the sort of thing you need to add to your pages.

[vehelpfulguy]

delayed, note that the meta tags are not there to be seen by the end user, so you will see no diference when you view your web site or web page.

If you do as squarebear says then they will only appear when you do "view source" to view the underlying HTML.

Note they go into the HEAD section of the HTML (between the opening HEAD statement and the closing HEAD statement).

More here:

http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?pag e=2167931

[delayed]

thank you squarebear & vehelpfulguy for your replies i am going to read from the link you sent..i dont know what i am doing wrong but when i add these meta tags from source what happens is that i save the changes i have added but then when i go back to view ,then source the changes have not been added. i am using the sitemaker www.moonfruit.com
thank you both again..denise

[rojash]

If you go to the Support page of moonfruit and select the category "Search engines and Sitemaker" you will find full instructions there.

[webdude]

Not all search engines read the meta tags, and it should be remembered that search engines are also reading the text on your pages, so you should work keywords and phrases into your pages as well as the meta data to help boost your rankings.

They also check the validity of the code on your pages, so make sure they adhere to the required standards. If you have images make sure they have alt tag data, this also helps to increase ranking, as does the inclusion of relevant and meaningful page tiles.