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|Meta
Tags Revealed| |Did
You Know?|
|Meta
Tag Variations| |Meta
Tag Guidelines|
|Sites of the Month| |Tip
of the Month|
Meta
Tags Revealed
Ah…
the mysterious meta tag. What is it and how can it help your search
engine ranking? In the search engine optimization game, meta tags
are by no means the most important element you should be worrying
about. However, using them effectively can give you an edge over the
competition and help control how your site is listed in the search
results. For enlightenment, read on…
What is meta data?
The
information we put on a page is content. Meta data is the
information used to describe or define that content. So, it’s not
content in and of itself, and it doesn’t appear on users’
screens. Instead, meta data sits quietly in the HEAD element, adding
commentary to the page for anyone – or anything – who cares to
look.
What
meta tags do the search engines read?
Although
there are no concrete rules defining what information a search
engine, spider or robot pulls from your page, many search engines do
make use of two primary meta tags; description and keywords.
Although not technically a meta tag, the title tag should also be
included as an element for the search engines. All of these tags let
you further define your site’s content and function so that those
searching for your site’s content have a better chance of finding
you and can get an accurate sense of what your site offers.
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Did You
Know?
Keyword
and description meta tags are used on the homepages of only 34% of
all web sites. Only 0.3% of sites use the meta data standard.
Source:
Nature
Magazine, July 1999
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Meta
Tag Variations:
There
are three variations of meta tags to consider when optimizing your
site for the search engines:
-
Generally optimized tags
– Most web sites will put together only one set of tags that they
will use throughout their site or on the home page only. These are
generally very broad and lengthy, reflecting the content of the
whole site. Although they are better than nothing, they are not the
most effective use of meta tags.
-
Doorway page tags
– These are at the other end of the scale from generally optimized
tags. Doorway pages are web pages that are designed to do well in
search engine results for a specific key phrase on a specific search
engine. Tags written for these pages are highly focused and short,
generally including the key phrase and little else. Unless these
pages provide real value for search results and are professionally
done, they are a risky undertaking as some search engines will
consider them Spam and penalize the parent web site.
-
Content-specific tags
– This is a very powerful use of the meta tag. Writing
content-specific tags means writing different tags for each section
or, even more powerful, each page of a web site. This is time
consuming but can give you an edge over the competition as not many
sites go to the trouble. It also increases your chances of coming up
in the results for very topic-specific searches, meaning that the
resulting clickthrough is highly qualified. Below are some general guidelines
and tips for crafting effective content-specific tags.
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Meta
Tag Guidelines:
Title tag:
|
Function: |
Provides the title for your listing in the search results |
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Limits: |
6 word maximum
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|
Tips: |
Important keyword(s) should appear close to the beginning
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Description meta tag:
|
Function: |
Returns a description of the page in place of the summary the search
engine would ordinarily create
|
|
Limits: |
200 character, 25 word maximum
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|
Tips: |
This text should appeal to both the human and robot visitor. It
should grab the attention but also include important keywords. The
rule of thumb is to try and create a sentence that will make users
want to click through to your site. Crafting a simple sentence that
can do that effectively will serve you better than rambling your way
through several lines in an attempt to list everything.
|
Keyword meta tag
|
Function: |
Provides keywords for the search engine to associate with your page
|
|
Limits: |
1000 character maximum
|
|
Tips: |
Don’t use the maximum. Keep these short,
relevant to the
visible content on the page, with some synonyms included.
|
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Pluralize everything
possible.
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Include common misspellings.
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Everything should be lower case because most people type
searches in this way and some engines are case sensitive. However,
it may be worthwhile including capitalization on proper and place
names.
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Don’t use commas to separate and try to group phrases
together. This is in order to increase the chance of matching a
string of words that someone may enter into a search engine.
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Try to keep keyword repetition down. This also includes
search strings – swim swimming swimmer would count as three
repetitions. There are no official limits but as the engines crack
down harder on Spammers, tolerance for repetition has decreased.
Infoseek, for instance, actually downgrades a page the more often a
word is repeated in a tag.
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Proper Format:
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<HEAD>
<TITLE>Domain.com</TITLE>
<META
name=”description” content=” This page's description.”
<META
name=”keywords” content=”keyword1 keyword2 keyword3”>
</HEAD>
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