Note: We have a free Meta Tag Generator for DIY SEO Enthusiasts . This article does not show actual meta tag HTML because the examples were confusing the blog software template. You can see some meta elements here.
For people who are just getting started in the website optimization world, meta tags are generally the first element addressed in the SEO (search engine optimization) process. Unfortunately, they are sometimes the only SEO attention that a site gets, which is unfortunate, since metatags alone won’t create rankings. SEO professionals do not hold metatags in high regard, despite the basic importance of having good tags. This is because there are many other elements that determine search engine rankings, like on-page content and links. However, the right meta tag choices will definitely improve your search engine standings.
First and most important is the Title tag, which doesn’t use the word “meta” in its HTML designation, but is part of the metatag group given that it is written at the same time as other tags. Proper title tag writing has a significant impact on search engine rankings. In some cases, all you have to do is change your title to get better search engine positions. There are many multimillion dollar enterprises that have not caught on to this fact. Normally the first 60 characters of the title tag will show up in search engine results above a description or snippet of page content. The most important keywords should go near the beginning of your title, especially on the homepage.
Second is the Description tag. This should be a concise (between 200 and 250 character) description of the page contents and your business. A snippet of this tag is likely to be used in search engine results, although the search engine has the prerogative to grab any piece of text on your site for the snippet. Make sure to use the page’s most important keywords in the description, and write it so it grabs a reader’s attention. A description tag should have sentence structure, and should not be a list of keywords separated by commas.
Third is the Keywords tag. The keywords tag should be a list of keywords separated by commas. It should not be longer than 500 characters, but you should assume that the search engines aren’t going to care about the keywords tag anyway. This is because people abused the keywords tag when it first came out. We have noticed that Yahoo still reads the keywords tag (we found this out when we put common typos into the keywords tag, and nowhere else, and the pages got indexed in Yahoo) and even a fractional amount of traffic can sometimes bring in good sales. From an SEO standpoint, many people leave the keywords tag out entirely, with no ill effects, but it may still have an incremental value. In general, put keywords in order of importance, and don’t repeat any keywords in the list or you may be suspected of spamming the search engine.
For the first three metatag categories (title, description, and keywords) it is important to prevent duplicates. Each tag should be unique. Titles should be relevant to each page’s content. Descriptions can have a single unique sentence at the beginning and a common tagline for the next two sentances, but ideally they should be 100% unique. If you are monitoring your site in Google Webmaster Tools, Google will indicate duplicate descriptions and titles. These should be addressed as quickly as possible. If you have a site with several thousand pages, there are ways to use dynamic insertion to make each title and description unique.
There are multiple other meta tag designations, like rating, author, city, state, and copyright, which may be used by search engines, but aren’t treated as highly as other tags. If you are going to use a “rating” tag, it should be appropriate for the content, so you don’t exclude people from all-ages sites and you do exclude them from sites with profanity or adult content. There is a revisit-after tag, but normally we don’t recommend using this one because you may be telling search engines to only look at your site periodically, which means that it takes longer for changes to your website to get noticed.
Some metatags can hurt you if they are not used correctly. If you have a “robots” metatag that says “noindex, nofollow” then search engines are going to ignore every page that contains the metatag. If you use meta refresh tags on pages with minimal content, your site could be mistaken for having “doorway pages” which are an old SEO trick that creates serious penalties for your site.
Sometimes a meta tag is necessary if Google or Yahoo is showing a site description based on your listing in the Open Directory, or DMOZ.org. Normally this description is not up to date, or may be very brief. The way to fix this is with a “noodp” tag which tells the engines to use your own meta description or a snippet instead of this tag.
The big rule for meta tag usage is to make sure that the tags match up seamlessly with the content you have on the relevant webpage, and with the links that are pointing at your site. The title tag, above other tags, describes what the page is about, so it should match up with actual searches for your product, service, or message. Properly focused meta tags improve rankings and click volume. Consistency goes a long way with people and search engines, since the engine gets its credibility from serving up accurate results, and people will jump off a site (or “bounce”) if they don’t see what they are looking for. By having the right metatags based around the best keywords, you can increase traffic, make more money, and build your brand in the search engines. Even though metatags are just the first step in the journey of search engine optimization, they will have a definite impact on everything that comes afterward.
Having a good meta description could actually improve your click thru ratio on search engines. Why let a search engine describe your site when you can?