Meta Tags
[private].[/private]Meta Tags
Meta tags have never been a guaranteed way to gain a top ranking on crawler-based search engines, and today, the most valuable feature they offer the web site owner is the ability to control to some degree how their web pages are described by some search engines.
However, although they are pretty much redundant these days, web pages still need such tags to be correctly categorized by Search Engines, and to provide an accurate representation of your site should you be seen in the search results.
Meta Tag Overview
What are meta tags? They are information inserted into the “head” area of your web pages. Other than the title tag (explained below), information in the head area of your web pages is not seen by those viewing your pages in browsers. Instead, meta information in this area is used to communicate information that a human visitor may not be concerned with. Meta tags, for example, can tell a browser what “character set” to use or whether a web page has self-rated itself in terms of adult content.
Let’s see two common types of meta tags, then we’ll discuss exactly how they are used in more depth:
<TITLE>ProFromGo</TITLE>
<META>name=”description” content=”Description of the site”>
<META>name=”keywords” content=”keyword1,keyword2″>
</HEAD>
In the example above, you can see the beginning of the page’s “head” area as noted by the HEAD tag — it ends at the portion shown as /HEAD.
Meta tags go in between the “opening” and “closing” HEAD tags. Shown in the example is a TITLE tag, then a META DESCRIPTION tag, then a META KEYWORDS tag. Let’s talk about what these do.
The Title Tag
The HTML title tag isn’t really a meta tag, but it’s worth discussing in relation to them. Whatever text you place in the title tag (between the TITLE and /TITLE portions as shown in the example) will appear in the reverse bar of someone’s browser when they view the web page.
Some browsers also supplement whatever you put in the title tag by adding their own name. Internet Explorer is notorious for doing so.
The title tag is also used as the words to describe your page when someone adds it to their “Favorites” or “Bookmarks” lists.
The Meta Description Tag
The meta description tag allows you to influence the description of your page in the crawlers that support the tag.
Look back at the example of a meta tag. See the first meta tag shown, the one that says “name=description”? That’s the meta description tag. The text you want to be shown as your description goes between the quotation marks after the “content=” portion of the tag (generally, 200 to 250 characters may be indexed, though only a smaller portion of this amount may be displayed).
The Meta Keywords Tag
The meta keywords tag allows you to provide additional text for crawler-based search engines to index along with your body copy. How does this help you? Well, for most major crawlers, it doesn’t. That’s because most crawlers now ignore the tag.
However, the meta keywords tag is still sometimes useful as a way to reinforce the terms you think a page is important for ON THE FEW CRAWLERS THAT STILL SUPPORT IT. For instance, if you had a page about stamp collecting — AND you say the words stamp collecting at various places in your body copy — then mentioning the words “stamp collecting” in the meta keywords tag MIGHT help boost your page a bit higher for those words.
Descriptions are Everything
When someone does a search on Google, MSN or wherever else, they’ll scan through the page titles and descriptions. While search engines will not always display the description you wrote for the meta description, they often will… particularly if the search term being used can be found exactly in the meta description you wrote.
So let’s consider the times when both your page title and meta description are used by the search engines. Because you’re in control of writing them, you can quickly signal to your readers that your page is directly relevant to their search.
In other words, your title and description should be descriptive and useful. You have just a few words with which to wave your hand and persuade readers to click on your listing first.
Let readers know exactly what they can expect from the page and, wherever possible, include a promise. If your page is going to deliver something useful, say a few words about how the reader will benefit.
And yes, a great page title and description can result in someone clicking on your listing in third place, rather than on a poorly described listing in the number one spot.
