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Making sense of meta tagsSearch engines never used to have algorithms as advanced as today. They did not have the technology to determine a website's relevance based on uniqueness, link popularity, page rankings or other criteria. Instead, search engines used to rely on the information website owners supplied about their websites. This information was provided in the form of a HTML code in the header section of the website, which is usually invisible to the user. Back then, webmasters would attempt to optimise websites using these tags.
There are a number of these tags, but the most important are the description meta tags and the keyword meta tags. The codes for them look something like this:
<meta name="description" content="short description of the page"> <meta name="keywords" content="list of your keywords">
All webmasters ever needed to do was to write a good description of the website - complete with a list of keywords - copy the above codes into the header section of the website, submit the website to the search engine and voila! But is it still that simple?
The death of the keyword meta tag
According to an article on www.searchenginewatch.com, keyword meta tags are a thing of the past: “… the value of adding meta keyword tags to pages seem little worth the while. In my opinion, the meta keywords tag is dead, dead, dead”.
While we wouldn’t advise webmasters to spend hours on meta tag descriptions, there’s no harm in spending a couple of minutes per page filling them out. If you do decide to, never include a keyword or phrase in the meta tag that is irrelevant to the content of your website - it would be like giving someone the wrong road directions. Never add as many keywords as you can think of, either, and don’t be disillusioned in thinking that the keyword meta tag is the best way to achieve better rankings. Instead, include your most important keyword or phrase to the tag and continue with other SEO techniques.
Please note: There are con people in operation today who trick those with limited knowledge of SEO into thinking that they can achieve better rankings simply by tweaking meta tags. This is not true and they are wasting both your time and money.
How meta tags should be used
We will now demonstrate how you can make the best use of your website’s description meta tag using our own website as an example. Type one of the following phrases into a search engine such as Yahoo:
- internet marketing Spain
You’ll see that www.clevermarketingspain.com is always amongst the top five search results. In most cases, the listing beneath looks something like this:
Internet Marketing Solutions for Companies in Spain
Now compare this with our description meta tag:
<meta name="description" content="websites don't work without Search Engine Optimisation, find out about Clever Marketing's Internet Marketing solutions">
You’ll notice that Yahoo uses the same content of our description meta tag for its description of us in the search results. Now while the use of the description meta tag won’t necessarily get you better rankings, it does enable you to describe your website in your own words. Surely that’s worth a minute of your time?
So what about your own meta tags? Clever Marketing offers a free consulting service about the suitability of your website with SEO, including the most effective use of meta tags.  |
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