What are Meta Tags? - SEO Video Blog
YouTube Channel = http://www.youtube.com/crearecomm
Script:
Nick: Hi and welcome to ‘what are meta tags’, my name is Nick and I am currently an SEO developer for Creare Communications, I am joined by my colleague James who is a web designer also from creare.
James: Hello
Nick: We intend to discuss the SEO, design and marketing aspects of Meta Tags.
Nick: The META element provides metadata such as a document’s keywords, description, and author. Any number of META elements may be contained in the <head> of a document.
James: So, Meta tags have various purposes, today we often see them used by SEO companies to promote keywords behind the scenes of a website. But from a design point of view, clients can often see their meta description in the Search Engine results page or SERP . This means it is important that they are legible and most importantly that they make sense.
Nick: This is an important point because often bespoke content management systems are sometimes designed to generate meta keyword and meta description tags automatically from a page titles, tags or similar, This often means that they make little sense and are not user or search friendly.
Nick: Historically Meta tags used to hold a lot of weight and were vital for internal optimisation, it was exploited by optimisers and Google had to evolve their algorithm as to prevent this from happening, Google now takes into consideration a wide range of different variables designed to keep optimisers guessing.
James: Although we are saying that meta data is no longer a vital SEO asset, we still believe its worth adding them in for alternatives to Google and as previously mentioned the description tag is shown in the search results by all search engines including Google, meaning you can use this opportunity to connect with your user and write something to attract people to click your listing.
James: We like to traditionally use the following tags:
<meta name=”distribution” content=”Global” /> - <meta name=”rating” content=”Safe For Kids” /> -
<meta name=”description” content=”" /> -<meta name=”keywords” content=”" />
<meta name=”author” content=” ” /> - <meta name=”copyright” content=”" />
Nick: So lets concentrate on the 2 most important tags, the meta keyword and meta description tag.
James: The Keywords tag is traditionally a list of keywords that you want your site to appear for in a search query.
Nick: I think the most important aspect to consider when writing a keyword tag is to be consistent with the rest of the internal optimisation on your site, so the search engine can see that your content reflects your chosen keywords.
James: As an example is we wanted to optimise for
• air conditioning
• commercial air conditioning
• conditioning maintenance
You would separate each phrases and word with a comma as shown.
“Air conditioning, Commercial Air Conditioning, Air Conditioning Maintenance, Air, Conditioning, Maintenance, Commercial”
Nick: The description tag is similar, it will include all your key words but you also have to consider the way it reads and whether it catches the publics imagination. I would suggest that you include your clients company name and even the area that they are based in the meta description, This was users can immediately see whether the company fits their needs and location.
For example is you were to use the air conditioning keywords mentioned before you would write something like:
“’Your Company Name’ provides commercial air conditioning solutions throughout the UK, We also provide a maintenance and repair service for any air conditioning units that we supply.”
James: Despite the fact they no longer hold the weight as they previously did, they should not be overlooked. Any respectable web design or Search Engine Optimisation company should use meta data to its full potential.
Nick: We will be releasing similar videos in weeks to come both on Web design and Search Engine Optimisation. You can subscribe to our RSS feed or Subscribe to our youtube channel at youtube.com/crearecomm. Thanks For Watching.
June 4th, 2009
Sweet blog. I never know what I am going to come across next. I think you should do more posting as you have some pretty intelligent stuff to say.
I’ll be watching you .