Optimise Meta Tags | How to Optimise your Meta Data

Meta data is another descriptor for documents, much like a title tag, meta data provides a description for webpages. Search engines still utilize meta data, although not as much as they once did.

Meta data is assigned to a document, and provides a description of the webpage, and provides an assignment of keywords.

You cannot see meta data on a webpage because it Is placed within the HTML code of the website. This acts in the same group as title tags, but does not have a value as high as title tags.

Meta data gives search engines more information about the page, and is also used in search listings below the title tags.

Search engines like Google do not utilize meta data in the same way that they once did. Because meta data was abused with keyword stuffing and misleading descriptions, Google will now populate its own view of the page.

Sometimes, search engines will still use the description tag from meta data.

Lets look at meta data:

A search in Google for "Vauxhall Astra" returns the following at position 1:

The meta data above is seen as the description of the document.

The description is as follows:

"Vauxhall Astra TwinTop - Because your heart says convertible and your head says ... The Vauxhall Astra Twintop seats 4 adults - with room for luggage too! ..."

This is only one of the many meta attributes that exist.

Lets look at Meta Data in the HTML code of a website:

Here is a snapshot of HTML code from Vauxhall:

Above you can see various tags with the starting line of <meta.

These tags are descriptors, and provide an overview of the document from its keywords and descriptions through to the author and copyright information.

We will only focus on the 2 factors that have any contributions towards SEO, even if the contribution is small.

The first tag we will look at is the descriptions tag, which is the more important of the 2 tags.

You should use the following template for your HTML code to add in the Meta data

These are the 2 meta tags that you should focus on initially, later we will look at other important meta tags including robot instructions.

WRITING A GOOD DESCRIPTION TAG:

Writing a good description tag doesn't have to be a difficult task when you follow the simple principles. Firstly, you need to remember that you have limited space for a description tag, typically 200 characters at best which translates into about 25-30 words. Avoid making your description too long, as most search engines will truncate your description (will cut it short).

Good descriptions are descriptions that:

" Make sense to the visitor

" Are written in good English with the correct grammar

" Describe the pages content in the best possible way

" Do not have keywords stuffed in them

That's it, really, it's that simple.

Lets look at an example:

Lets say we have a page on tropical fish, what does this page do, is it information about tropical fish, is it sales information, or just query data?

Whatever the pages goal, should determine the type of description that you write,

If the page is a sales page, make the description sales orientated, like as follows

Sales Orientated Description:

Here you can buy cheap tropical fish online, choose from a selection of tropical fish from angel fish to fighter fish.

If the page is an information page, make the description focused towards an information resource, like as follows

Information Orientated Description:

Tropical fish are a species of fish that are found in tropical climates, where water temperatures range between 24-30 degrees.

Can you see the pattern?

This makes a big difference to click through rates, as most people use a scan of the description to make a decision on clicking through.

It may seem like a small factor, but actually it's a large contribution to click through rates.

So Remember:

Good descriptions are descriptions that:

" Make sense to the visitor

" Are written in good English with the correct grammar

" Describe the pages content in the best possible way

" Do not have keywords stuffed in them

WRITING GOOD KEYWORD META DATA

Your meta keyword field is more than likely going to be ignored by search engines, instead your keywords will be established based on your pages content and backlinks (links from other websites). These are popular measures because they are a better way of evaluating a pages relevancy to its keywords, rather than the webmaster forcing an invalid group of keywords.

When adding keywords into your keyword meta, use a handful of keywords that are directly relevant to the page itself, rather than the website.

Use 3-5 keywords and NO MORE.

Stuffing hundreds of keywords into this tag will be detrimental towards your websites rankings rather than a positive SEO factor.

Use the pages target keywords, and maybe 2-3 alternates of your core keywords for the page.

Tropical Fish Page:

GOOD KEYWORD ASSIGNMENT:

Buy Tropical Fish, Tropical Fish Information, Rare Fishes in the Tropics

BAD KEYWORD ASSIGNMENT:

Buy tropical fish online, tropical fishing, tropical fishes and information, cheap online fish store, buying tropical fish online, rare tropical fish shop, tropical fish website, tropical fish climate information

As you can see, the bad keyword assignment not only has too many keywords, it alternates the actual theme by trying to cover more than the page actually does, which is viewed as misleading.

Keywords should only be assigned, if they have appropriate content on the page that re-enforces it.

Other IMPORTANT uses for Meta Data

Did you know that you can tell search engines not to index specific pages, or you can instruct search engines to index the page without following any outbound links.

How?

Easy, you can assign an additional meta tag that instructs search engines on indexing.

Here are the options:

This version of the meta tag prevents Google and other search engines from Indexing or crawling the documents links. Applying both of these tags will prevent the page being indexed or acknowledged. This can be useful on pages that are either using duplicate content, or important login pages.

This version of the meta tag will prevent search engines from following the links on the page, but will allow search engines to index the page and its content. This is useful in situations for pages that should not inherit page rank. This is commonly found on pages that are not important towards rankings, such as privacy policy pages, summary pages, contact pages or other pages with a large volume of outbound links.

** Be Careful With This Tag **

This version of the meta tag will prevent the search engines from indexing the page, but will allow the search engines to crawl links that are found on the page. This is useful and commonly implemented on search results pages which are dynamic, yet offer useful links to other parts of the website.

This version of the meta tag will allow search engines to crawl and index the page whilst crawling links on the page. Typically search engines will do this without this tag being present.

You should always seek professional advice before implementing tags to prevent crawling and indexing issues.

For more information on Meta Tags or Crawl Information visit:

http://www.assertive-media.co.uk/meta-tags.html

http://www.assertive-media.co.uk/crawl-permissions.html