First let’s review what exactly are meta tags. Meta tags are sentences arranged in a specific format that contain information that is crucial to search engines. This information provides specific criteria that search engine use to categorize your web pages.
Of all the Meta tags that can appear in the source code of a page the most important are the following:
- Title Tag
- Meta Description
We call these tags “hot property real estate” for your website. So what about the Meta Keyword tag? Is that one important? It used but is no longer used by any of the search engines.
The importance and use of Meta tags comes and goes. Several years ago, Google did not even use the Meta Description tag. Google instead either created it’s own from sentences grabbed from your page content or used the description found in the Open Directory Project. Now however Google uses the Meta Description tag that you embed in your source code.
Yahoo for many sites is not returning the Meta Title tag in their search results, they are instead supplying the first <h1> tag or header tag on the page in the content.
Personally I feel that the Title Tag and Meta Description Tag are some of the most important tags on your page. The first, Title Tag is typically crafted as a keyword dense string of keywords about 80 characters long. I never include the business name in this very small space as search engines will pick that up from the page content.
The Meta Description tag I usually craft as a keyword dense series of two or three sentences that are done with proper punctuation and grammar. I stick closely to the theme of the content on the page. Additionally I craft a different Meta Title and Meta Description for each page in the website when humanly possible.
I have seen sites move up in the search results based on changes in these two crucial areas alone, they are this important to organic placement on search engines.
You can review your own Meta tags very easily. First the Meta Title tag is visible at the very top of your browser screen just before the frame of your monitor starts and typically is just to the right of the IE icon above your browser buttons.
The Meta Description tag is visible by right clicking on your web page and by selecting view source. Your browser will most likely open the page’s code in Notepad. Scroll or use Find to locate this line <meta name=”description” content=” This is the lead in code syntax where your webmaster or web developer has placed your actual Meta Description. Some sites will not have this important Meta tag and we recommend correcting this for best search engine placement.
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