Back to Basics - What Are Meta Tags

Whilst at a meeting last week I overheard a group discussing meta tags and was shocked at what I overheard.

The knowledgeable one was delivering a sermon on the importance of the meta keyword tag and in doing so deriding the other meta tags. In order to re create some balance I thought it would be good to get back to basics.

So what are meta tags

Meta tags are blocks of code within a web page that informs search engines what the website is about. How you write your meta tags will impact upon how your web site is listed and described by search engines. Different search engines interpret meta tags in different ways but it is important to consider and be able to write

• Meta Title
• Meta Description
• Meta Keywords (least important)

There are other meta tags but that's for another time. It's ironic really that you've probably all heard about the meta keyword list, which is, as far as Google is concerned, the least important.

meta title
OK! imagine you run a hotel in Muckletoon. You have carried out your keyword research and want to optimise your page for "Accommodation Muckletoon". You have already sorted out the page URL as

http://www.mysite.com/accommodation-muckletoon

Your meta title should ideally start with "Accommodation Muckletoon", not just because we say so, but because there's been lots of tests carried out and putting your primary keywords for the page at the start of the meta title gives better results.

Your meta title may read:

Accommodation Muckletoon | Comfortable Hotel Accommodation at Alfreds

The code will read:

<title>Accommodation Muckletoon | Comfortable Hotel Accommodation at Alfreds</title>

Wee points to note:

• Keep your meta title to 50-60 characters
• Dont just stuff your meta title with keywords make it descriptive

meta description
Your meta description is usually what will be displayed under the meta title in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). It's important then that the description incorporates your keywords "Accommodation Muckletoon" but it is also important that the description is enticing and will encorage potental visitors to click on the link.

Your meta description may read:

Alfreds Hotel offers comfortable hotel accommodation in Muckletoon, overlooking Muckletoon Promenade, Alfreds accommodation is the best in town.

The code will read:

<meta name="description" content="Alfred's Hotel offers comfortable hotel accommodation in Muckletoon, overlooking Muckletoon Promenade" />

Wee points to note:

• Keep your meta description to a maximum of 160 characters
• Remember to keep the description readable - search engines dictate rankings but human beings click on links.

meta keywords

The following advice is quite out of date. I'm only leaving it here so that future historians may understand how search engines worked in the Dark Ages of the Internet. The Keywords meta tag is unlikely to have any positive effect on your search engine ranking; Bing, for example, will sometimes punish sites for using it.

Many of the major search engines including Google do not support the use of the keywords meta tag, however some search engines do. Whilst some SEO consultants advise that it's not worth the time to implement, if you are using sellIT or ManageIT, it's simply a case of completing the box.

Your meta keyword list may read:

accommodation,accommodation muckletoon,muckletoon,comfortable,hotel,hotel accommodation

The code will read:

<meta name="keywords" content="accommodation,accommodation muckletoon,muckletoon,comfortable,hotel,hotel accommodation" />

Wee points to note:

• Keywords should be comma separated
• Current advice suggests that using between 30 & 180 characters is best

Posted by Dan at 01/02/2011 20:03:00