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 be
careful 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 those words
as well. For example, "Boston painting
contractors".
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