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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December 14th, 2007 at 11:51 am
Nice article, Michael. This is a good reminder to those of us blog authors who have been around the Web for awhile to take a second look at our meta-tag settings.
December 15th, 2007 at 5:12 am
Good article!
Another tip is to use a hook in the description rather than the title. The title is so short a space to fit everything in whereas the description tag gives you more room.
December 15th, 2007 at 10:03 am
Kirk, you are right, all bloggers should optimize their title and description meta tags before posting an article.
Halifax, that is a great idea indeed. The meta description tag can be used to increase Click-Thrus on your listings by including benefits right into them.
December 30th, 2007 at 6:28 am
Write for the humans not the engines. End of the day, the user will eventually be the one reading your title and description. Although it has been proved by many that similar meta description across pages will not harm your results, i will still advise the rest to follow unique meta description technique. Play safe.
March 18th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Thanks for the info. I have seen a site almost double its traffic after changing the Meta Description to not be exactly the same as the page title. What are your thoughts on the contemporary importance of Meta Tags? Many SEO’s have said they are dead, or have much less importance.
March 24th, 2008 at 6:44 am
Sweet resource, just what I have been looking for.
I have added you to Stumbleupon.
April 8th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
Even though google don’t see meta title and meta description that much important like the old day, but meta title and meta description are still important especially when it comes to search engine search result pages.
April 11th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
meta descriptions the same across all pages may not harm but they definitely dont help you either.
carefully crafted descriptions can help seo as well as clickthrough, often you’ll see long tail search terms picking a word or phrase from the description along with the main page keywords
titles critical, descriptions useful sometimes, keywords not with the typing
April 14th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
People love stories and especially stories which they can relate to. I found that if you can provide a rags-to-riches story or some other success story, people will relate to it. It builds trust.
May 9th, 2008 at 6:04 am
Great Info. It is sad to see sooo many sites that people have paid money for, sit idle, lost in the serps on page 500. I have seen site after site with default meta tags and identical descriptions for every page.
Writing for the reader is a definate must, however, being able to write for the reader and still manage to entice the spiders is exactly what needs to happen. It is the middle ground that can prove to be win/win.
May 25th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
I have just begun to realize the importance of meta tags. A previous poster said write for the humans and not the machines.
I am finding that my structure is not structured at all. Another article regarding structure is what turned that light on for me. Kirk said this article should make us all examine our meta tags all over. I agree.
June 28th, 2008 at 7:23 am
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July 29th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
YES the and tags are a key factor.
Understand though, that the train never leaves the station without keyword research. Often you will find ideas from looking at someone’s source code, but is his vision the same as yours?
You get 66 characters in your tag. Use each one like a gold nugget. Spend hours perfecting it.
August 2nd, 2008 at 4:47 am
When doing meta tags is it best to use commas after each item you are describing or do you just list words with no commas.
Thanks
August 25th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Pamela -
Have you noticed a measurable difference between the two? I ‘ve tried both on different sites and can’t see a repeatable difference.
September 22nd, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Thank you, nice article.
www.InfiniteMpressions.com
December 17th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Its good that you pointed out that Title keyword density is important as well.
January 13th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
There are many things that make an seo campaign successful. Keyword density is very important but I think the most significant things is link building. Proper link building does make a huge difference between a successful seo campaign and one that fails.
May 21st, 2009 at 3:32 am
Thank you very much. Usefull article. Meta tags are very important thing for search engines such as google. I will use it on my sites.
June 30th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Whil SEO seems like a large mountain that needs to be climbed, there a also some basic steps required