SEO Secrets: How To Write Effective Meta Tags
You see meta tags every day but unless you work in web development, SEO or some other related industry, most regular users of the web if asked could not explain what they are or where to find them. Meta tags are not viewable directly on a website without looking at the page source, but they are read and cached by search engines to interpret the content of a web page as well as provide descriptions of the site in their listings.
Meta tags provide various information about the site including the page title, page description, page keywords as well as copyright, rating, author and distribution information. Meta tags may not be considered as important as they used to be for SEO purposes but they still provide valuable information to the search engines and are often the first pieces of information users see regarding the content/purpose of the site. Of all the meta information that is provided the most important is the meta title, meta description and meta keywords.
The meta title tag is important both for SEO and click through purposes because the search engines place a small value on a well written title, which helps with ranking as well as showing the title in the results (this will generally be the actual link you click on in the search results to go to the page).
A title tag should be a short (less than 70 characters), clear description of your website. The title should include keywords the page is being optimised for and if there is space your company name.
There are many different combinations of keywords and areas you can use to construct the meta title. For example an effective way the title could be structured is:
Keyword Area, Keyword 2, Keyword 3, Area 2 – Company name(if space in 70 characters)
So if a Pet Shop optimised for ‘Pet Shop’, ‘Pet Food’ and ‘Pet Toys’ in Liverpool and Birkenhead the title should read:
Pet Shop Liverpool, Pet Food, Pet Toys, Birkenhead – Pet Shop Name
It is possible to simply put ‘Pet Shop Liverpool – Pet Shop Name’ but not only is this less enticing you’ve missed out on an opportunity to let the search engine know what keywords are optimised on this page.
The meta description appears under the page title link in search engine results and is used to provide a short blurb about a website. The meta description is as important to a website as a headline is to a newspaper; a short, enticing sentence or two that makes the reader want to keep reading.
In essence, the meta description is an advertisement for your site. While inclusion of keywords in the description is also important it’s valuable to remember not to go over the top as it’s also very much about what the meta description says and above all conversion rate. Although space here is limited to two lines of text (no more than 150 characters), what is written here has a huge impact on whether someone decides to visit your site or not. Therefore, its well worth taking some care over what you write here to gain the optimum combination of advertising draw and useful information.
The meta keyword tag is the main area of meta data that can be abused by webmasters stuffing keywords. It’s not uncommon for webmasters to put hundreds of potentially relevant keywords in this tag in hope of appearing for more searches. As a reaction to this search engine algorithms have in recent times adjusted not to pay as much attention to this tag, but it can still be used to reinforce the relevancy of the pages content matter and not all search engines have reduced its value.
Therefore it is worth constructing a well chosen list of 5 – 12 keywords to incorporate into the meta keyword tag as it is simply another way to increase the probability your site will turn up in search engine results.
As mentioned before the meta tags are not as proficient as they used to be in SEO terms because they became notorious for keyword stuffing which search engines became aware of so reduced the sway these tags have over ranking protocol. However, it is simply good practice to construct well considered meta tags because what they have lost in ranking ability they make up for in ability to convert traffic to your site. Stick to the basic rules, don’t keyword stuff and make each page’s meta tags original and different from your site’s other pages and you cannot go far wrong.
For more information on meta tags please watch our meta tags video.
August 2nd, 2010
Very good information on meta tags. thanks for sharing with us.
August 9th, 2010
Meta tags are a major part, as are the keywords of choice as to how we market the products we sell on our E-commerce website. It starts with the title, then the tags and then the on page wording and the density of the word being used in place. The pages are very much built and worded around the choice of keywords.