Search Engine Optimization Tips: Meta Tags
By Vittorio BosioThis is the second article in a series that discusses on-site optimization tactics. Today we talk about the importance of the meta tags.
Meta Title
The meta title is the most important tag on the page. You can see what your competitors are using as their title tag by looking at the blue bar at the top of your browser when you visit their website.
Google uses the meta title as the clickable part of the search results. This is why you need to optimize your title tag not only for the search engines, but for the searcher too.
The meta title should be shorter than 100 characters and include your main keyword as early in the text as possible. Some web sites include the company name as the first word in the meta title: I generally advise against that and suggest to add the company name at the end of the title tag, if they really want to have it there.
Creating the same meta title for all your pages is very tempting, I know, but that would kill your SEO efforts. Take the time to create a unique title tag for every page of your website. This is a great opportunity to target different keywords with different pages on your web site.
Finally, since your title tag will have to compete with others in the search results, you want it to stand out as much as possible. To do that, you can capitalize the first letter of every word in your title tag and include a benefit too, to encourage the searcher to click on.
Meta Description
The meta description is less important than the meta title, but some search engines use it as the descriptive text of the search result and Google looks at it to decide your ranking.
This tag should expand on what the title tag is saying. Don’t just copy the title tag in here: it can actually hurt your rankings. Instead, use one or two sentences to describe the content of the page. The meta description tag is a great opportunity for using your main keyword together with some synonyms too.
Avoid using the same meta description across all your pages: that will hurt your rankings.
Meta Keywords
Many websites still include a meta keywords tag in their pages.
Search engines used to look at this tag too, which contained a list of keywords the webmaster wanted to rank for. Unfortunately people started abusing it and nowadays you get no additional boost for using it in your pages.
Coming Up
My next article will close this series on on-page optimization. If you have any doubts and what was covered today, please leave a comment below and I’ll try to clarify my points.
About the author: If you are interested in video tutorials and articles that can teach how to increase your web site traffic and build a list of targeted prospects for your business, you are going to like what Vittorio Bosio is saying on his blog: www.TechSavvyMarketer.com.
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