SEO Meta Tags
Meta tags are frequently talked about. Why? Meta tags are arguably the most important factor in Search Engine Optimization. There seems to be a meta tag for everything. But what do they really all mean?
The three primary Meta Tags for SEO and the others have little or no bearing for search engines due to past abuse or overuse.
- Title – <title>The name of your page should go here</title>
- Description – <meta name=“description” content=“The description of the content should be contained withing these quotation marks” />
- Keywords (less relevant in recent but may or may not be read by search engines so should be used with less focus) – <meta name=“keyword” content=“keyword1, keyphrase2, keyword 3″ />
By putting these between the head tags in the html source code give significant help to Search Engines. Using these tags should describe the page. A page about cooking oil should look like these:
- <title>Cooking Oil proper disposal</title>
- <meta name=“description” content=“Cooking oil disposial done correctly is environmentally safe and has the least damage to our environment” />
- <meta name=“keyword” content=“vegetable oil corn oil olive oil disposal” />
In the past there has been debate about whether to use commas or not in the keyword meta tag since they aren’t really all that important don’t get caught up in the debate. Do what ever flows or isn’t included in the other tags. Spend more time SEO copywriting the page than on the Keyword Meta Tag.
Meta tags are not required for display in a browser. Meta tags are invisible to the eye or at least relatively. You can see meta tags by right clicking a page and viewing it’s source. They are typically near the top of the page. So what makes Meta Tags important to Search Engine Optimization? The content in meta tags are displayed in Search Engine Results.
Displays:
In the case when meta tags aren’t used, search engines typically generate the description used in search results from text on page. For the obvious reason pages that don’t have the description meta tags don’t typically perform well.
Using the meta tags properly will come in another post later that you will be able to find over at Birmingham SEO.
I read an article where the writer put in crazy keywords that no one else would have. He search tested them later. Apparently Yahoo and MSN picked them up, but google didnt. That’s what I remember from the article anyway. Thanks for the post.