| Optimizing
Your Meta Tags
Meta tags were originally created to help search engines
find out important information about your page that
they might have had difficulty determining otherwise.
For example, related keywords or a description of the
page itself.
Many people incorrectly
believe that good meta tags are all that is needed to
achieve good listings in the search engines, which is
entirely incorrect. While meta tags are
usually always part of a well optimized page they are
not the be all and end all of optimizing your pages.
In the early days of the web people were able to get
great listings from optimizing just their meta tags,
but the increasing competition for good search engine
listings eventually led to many people spamming the
search engines with keyword stuffed meta tags. The result
is that the engines have changed what they look at when
they rank a web page.
The search engines now usually look at a combination
of all the best search engine tips to
determine your listings, not just your metas - some
don't even look at them at all! What this means is that
your page should have a combination of all our tips
implemented on your page - not just meta tags. That
being said, there are two meta tags that can help your
search engine listings - meta keywords & meta description.
What they look like:
Description Meta:
<META NAME="description" content="This
would be your description of what is on your page. Your
most important keyword phrases should appear in this
description.">
Keywords Meta:
<META NAME="keywords" content="keywords phrase
1, keyword phrase 2, keyword phrase 3, etc.">
Where they belong:
The correct placement for both meta tags is between
the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags within the HTML the
makes up your page. Their order does not really matter,
but most people usually place the description first
then the keywords meta.
Tag limits:
- We recommend that your Keywords Meta not exceed
1024 characters including spaces.
- We recommend that your Description Meta tag
not exceed 250 characters including spaces.
Meta description tips:
- Make sure you accurately describe the content of
your page while trying to entice visitors to click
on your listing.
- Include 3-4 of your most important keyword phrases.
Especially those used in your title tag and page copy.
- Try to have your most important keywords appear
at the beginning of your description. This often brings
better results, and will help avoid having any search
engine cut off your keywords if they limit the length
of your description.
Meta keywords tips:
- Aside from what we mention in the other tips below
you should only use those keyword phrases that you
also used in the copy of your page, title tag, meta
description, and other tags. Any keywords phrases
that you use that do not appear in your other tags
or page copy are likely to not have enough prominence
to help your listings for that phrase.
- Don't forget plurals. For example, a travel site
might have both "caribbean vacation" and
"caribbean vacations" in their keyword meta
tag to make sure they show up in both searches.
- If you know of a common misspelling of a popular
keyword that could be used to find your site you should
enter it in your keywords meta tag. For example, a
travel site might use "caribean " in their
keyword meta since it is a common misspelling for
"caribbean".
- Watch out for repeats! You want to include your
most important phrases, but when doing so it can be
difficult not to repeat one word many times. For example,
"caribbean vacation" and "caribbean
vacations" are two different phrases, but the
word "caribbean" appears twice. This is
okay to do in order to make sure you get the phrases
you need in there, but becareful not to repeat any
one word excessively. There in no actual limit, but
we recommend that no one word be repeated in the keyword
meta more than 5 times.
- If your site has content of interest to a specific
geographic location be sure to include the actual
location in your keyword meta.
|
