Whether you're a website designer or a search engine optimizer, you're sure to have come across meta tags somewhere along the line. Here's what you need to know about the little critters and how best to use them.
Back in the early days of search engine optimization (SEO), any given website's ranking in the search engines relied heavily on on-site optimization factors. These factors included, first and foremost, meta tags, as well as header tags, keyword density, and so forth.
As search engines have evolved, they have moved weighting away from on-site factors and towards off-site factors (as well as a host of other tiny factors). It is because of this change that meta tags are no longer as important as they used to be, but are still essential nonetheless.
Meta tags can be split into three types - "heading", "keywords" and "description". We'll look at all three separately.
The heading tag is what is displayed in the actual header of the internet browser (be it Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari). This tag is commonly thought to be the most important of the lot and should be used to reflect the keywords of that page. This tag is also the tag that shows up as the heading in a search result, so make sure that it includes your keywords, and an attractive copy t o catch the searcher's attention!
The keywords tag is pretty self-explanatory. This is used to reflect the keywords that best describe the page itself. You need to place your keywords in this tag. Insert them in order of importance with the most important keyword first - separated by commas. Some fanatics argue as to how many keywords you should use in this tag, but I recommend that you don't worry about this too much. Don't fret too much over this element.
The last of the meta tags is the description tag. This tag is what comes up in the body of the search engine results. You need to see this tag as your opportunity to lure visitors through to your website, so try to make it as compelling as possible, and sprinkle your keywords throughout the copy if at all possible. See it as a little classified advert!
And that sums up the long and short of meta tags. As mentioned, although they don't carry the weight that they used to, they're still an essential tool in the webmaster's tool kit. Make sure that you create customized meta tags for each page on your website, and don't be afraid to get creative about how you write your copy for the description tag! |
