SEO, also known as search engine optimization, is one of the key steps in creating, maintaining, and promoting a high-traffic website. Freeing you from spending thousands of dollars on advertising and promotion, SEO allows you to grow your traffic organically with the help of page rankings. What many web designers learn only after much experience, however, is the difference meta tags make in how your pages rank.
No aspect of SEO is more commonly overlooked than placing meta tags on every page. These tags, written into the code of your page where they are invisible to visitors, give search engines specific identifiers for the page. Some websites create their listings almost entirely on meta tags, yet many website owners fail to implement them to full effect.
There are different kinds of meta tags that impact SEO. Take, for instance, the META KEYWORDS tag. This meta tag provides a list of keywords to spiders, telling them what the website is all about. If you visit NYTimes.com and right click on the page, and then click on "View Page Source," you will find a meta tag about half down the first page reading META KEYWORDS. This tag will show you a long list of keywords starting with "New York Times, international news, daily newspaper, national news?" and so on. The keyword list contains dozens of words that relate to this particular paper but also to papers in general.
Most search engines also detect these keywords in page content, but it is helpful to include in a tag keywords that are especially low-density in text, such as unusual spellings of names and places, related topics not specifically mentioned on the page, and any other keywords it is difficult to inject into the text in a user-friendly way.
The second critical meta tag is the META DESCRIPTION tag. Search engines use this tag to display information about your site when in search results. Most search engines allow 160 characters in this meta tag. The META DESCRIPTION tag is also a place you may include keywords that boost your page rankings for targeted phrases.
There are many other meta tags, but these two tags are the most vital to SEO. Optimize your use of META KEYWORDS and META DESCRIPTION tags by making sure you do not cram them overfull of words that not related to your content. Always be aware that too many keywords here, like too many keywords in your content, will cause the search engines to mark your pages as spam.
Finally, be sure you use different meta tags for every page. It is useful to target tags to the content included on a particular page. If you repeat meta tags throughout your site, you will not benefit from valuable differences in keywords on particular pages.
No aspect of SEO is more commonly overlooked than placing meta tags on every page. These tags, written into the code of your page where they are invisible to visitors, give search engines specific identifiers for the page. Some websites create their listings almost entirely on meta tags, yet many website owners fail to implement them to full effect.
There are different kinds of meta tags that impact SEO. Take, for instance, the META KEYWORDS tag. This meta tag provides a list of keywords to spiders, telling them what the website is all about. If you visit NYTimes.com and right click on the page, and then click on "View Page Source," you will find a meta tag about half down the first page reading META KEYWORDS. This tag will show you a long list of keywords starting with "New York Times, international news, daily newspaper, national news?" and so on. The keyword list contains dozens of words that relate to this particular paper but also to papers in general.
Most search engines also detect these keywords in page content, but it is helpful to include in a tag keywords that are especially low-density in text, such as unusual spellings of names and places, related topics not specifically mentioned on the page, and any other keywords it is difficult to inject into the text in a user-friendly way.
The second critical meta tag is the META DESCRIPTION tag. Search engines use this tag to display information about your site when in search results. Most search engines allow 160 characters in this meta tag. The META DESCRIPTION tag is also a place you may include keywords that boost your page rankings for targeted phrases.
There are many other meta tags, but these two tags are the most vital to SEO. Optimize your use of META KEYWORDS and META DESCRIPTION tags by making sure you do not cram them overfull of words that not related to your content. Always be aware that too many keywords here, like too many keywords in your content, will cause the search engines to mark your pages as spam.
Finally, be sure you use different meta tags for every page. It is useful to target tags to the content included on a particular page. If you repeat meta tags throughout your site, you will not benefit from valuable differences in keywords on particular pages.
About the Author:
Justin Harrison is a leading Internet Marketing consultant responsible for the Internet Marketing strategies behind some of the biggest online brands including Amazon, BBC, MasterCard and many others.
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