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Important Meta Tag Building Tips
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What are meta tags anyway?
They are what all search engines look at in one form or another to list your web site in a search
engine directory. Located in the head of your web page code, your visitors don't see all of them but
without them your web site won't get very many visitors.
In order for each of your web pages on your web site to be properly categorized
by search engine spiders they must contain three very important meta tags.
- Title Tag: This is the single most important tag. It is what search engines
will use as the link to your web site within their directory. The title tag needs to contain as
many keywords that apply to your page as possible, be no longer than 60 characters long (includes
spaces) and be readable so that it will get people to click on it. Without a good title tag your
web page stands little chance of coming up high in keyword searches done on search
giants like Google. If not well crafted it will also not create enough interest to get clicked on.
- Description Tag: This is what you hope the search engine will use for the brief
description that is placed after your linked title in the search directory. It should also contain
as many keywords that are important to that particular web page, be no longer than 150 characters (includes spaces)
and be a legible sentence. It should reinforce the title making readers want to click on your listing
but do not duplicate your title word for word in your description. Some search directories use your
web page content in place of this description so be sure your first few sentences of content reflect
the purpose of the page and the page title. Each description should be unique also, try to avoid using a blanket
description tag for most all you web pages. You can read more about this in our article,
What do search engine spiders look for?
- Keyword Tag: Over time these have become less relevant and in some cases not
even looked at but most experts still highly recommended you use this tag to cover all your bases with all the
search engines. The keyword tag should contain only the keywords relevant to the page they represent, be in order
of importance, be no longer than 850 characters (includes spaces) and do not repeat any word, even
with in a phrase, more than three times. If you use a keyword that is not also in the content of the
web page some search engines will look at the whole page as not relevant enough to list. List your keywords in
the order of importance to your content and title, with the first 8 to 10 keywords or phrases being the
most important. Most all search engines will consider the over usage of keywords in either this tag or
the content as spamming so be careful not to use any one form of a word more than three times in the
keyword tag.
Using these three tags along with strong, relevant content will work in your
favor with search engine spiders that come visit your web site from time to time.
You can also review these resources:
An optimized Web Page Article
Your web site may have great visual appeal but search engine spiders don't care about looks.
Search spiders want a well-organized and well-connected web site with rich content and informative
descriptions of each page.
Keyword Suggestion Tool
For keyword building this tool can be very helpful.
Meta Tag Analyzer
For checking your Meta tags try Scrub The Web's Meta tag tool.
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