Search Engine
Optimization:
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:
Keywords Meta:
Where they
belong:
The correct placement for both meta
tags is between the and 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:
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 the
actual location in your keyword meta
*** Note to check out which each
problem is in detail click on the link to read about it. This article was pulled
from Microsoft Small Business Center. No Author available***
Skye
Hawk
At Your
Service!
Virtual Assistant Specialists
"Offering
exceptional off-site administrative support for the busy business
professional"
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