Having been on 'The Internet' (as my dad likes to call it) for about, I dunno, forever, I sometimes forget that even though its concepts are completely natural to me and I can ping a server at the drop of a hat, to most others it's a completely alien technology.

This is probably the biggest problem here, the world of computers in general is still not accessible to most and it's no surprise; many people over fifty still can't operate a DVD player - Windows Vista must seem like a challenge on the Krypton Factor.

So when talking to business owners and trying to impress on them the need to add a good 'Title tag' and 'Meta Description' to their page, it should come as no surprise when they look at me in bewilderment. I mean, it must seem like I'm speaking a different language. A language from another world.

Well, I need to fix that right now so here's the first in a long line of really simple guides. It won't make your website number one for every word in the dictionary, but it will at least give you a fighting chance against your competition. And anyway, something is better than nothing in the search engine world and better than your competition is just enough for now...

If you've never even got into the code behind a website, you'll be completely lost from the outset, so I'll explain a bit about what the data is that makes your site tick, starting with the 'Meta data'.

In short, 'meta data' is data to explain data. In the world of the web, we have three bits that are important to varying degrees. The picture on the right shows what they look like in a page.

Technically not 'meta data', but referred to as such by many, so we'll mention it here. This is the information that gets popped in the blue bar at the top of the visitor's browser. Very important for a number of reasons, not least because it tells the user what page they're on. Also, it explains to Google what the page is about. Very important then!

Rather than being under-used, these are very often over-used as they've been pretty useless for the major search engines for a while now. Google, MSN and Yahoo seem to ignore them completely and so it's not worth spending an awful long time on them. Instead, use them for informing other directories of your keywords.

For example, if you register with an online directory, they will very often query your site to see what the keywords are for their own index. That's pretty much the only use for them now, so don't go crazy spending hours deciding what to put in there. You'll go nuts.

OK, this is important. It's very important because this is the bit of text that Google displays in the listings when you do a search. See, very important. You have a chance here to help both Google and potential customers - here's how:

Don't think of the description as a place to bung a load of keywords, instead think of it as good marketing copy. If you were writing something for a leaflet or a shop for example, you'd be writing to entice your customers in, to buy. Well, if people find your pages listed on a web search then they might very well decide to go to your site because of something interesting said in the description.

If you do this right, then Google results will follow. Google likes good copy (although it can't understand it), so as long as you have some keywords and some good calls to action, you'll be fine.

It's important to keep in mind one particular rule that you should adhere to when writing copy and content for your tags and pages and that is: consider all your pages as home pages.

Yup - each one of them. Don't go bonkers and try to optimise just the front page of your site as a home page with every single keyword going to it. Have individual pages for individual items in your product or service range and create meta descriptions and titles especially for them.

And then you can get into the realm of double page listings on Google. I'll save that for aother hub though, I've got 100 to get through...