May 15th, 2010 by Nick

Any good search engine optimization company will tell you that the importance of meta tags was one of the first things they were taught in the basics of SEO. Meta tags used to form the backbone of successful searches and were one of the main things you could control to make your search engine rankings more efficient and successful. Nowadays meta tags are generally not thought of as the most important criteria within SEO. The reason for this is that search engines themselves are now more sophisticated and now use more in-depth methods of ranking a page than just the information in the meta tags. There is still a place for meta tags – you just need to be smarter when it comes to search engine optimisation.

The basic way a meta tag works is that it provides the search engine with relevant information regarding the nature and content of the site, other than the information that will be displayed within the title tags. This information is generally based around data such as the actual file format which the link or web page contains, or a description of the actual web page content. Meta tags do also include keywords which are picked up by the search engines, however one of the reasons meta tags stopped being the most important factor was that some companies were putting too many keywords in their meta tags to ensure a higher ranking within search engine results pages (SERPs). As search engines became more sophisticated they grew more aware of this sneaky tactic and designed themselves in such a way that this would not work as effectively.

You can use some optimizing techniques within your meta tags to make them more search engine friendly and aid your website in getting a higher search ranking. The content or descriptive meta tag is probably one of the most useful forms of doing this, as this basically tells the search engine what your site is all about. When creating descriptive meta tags, it is important to ensure that there is lots of clear and concise information so that your site is displayed in as many relevant searches as possible. Ensure any text within the descriptive meta tag portrays the content of your web pages. It is also a good idea to include one or two of your strongest keywords within this tag.

A separate meta tag just for keywords is also used, and this is ideal for getting multiple web pages into your search results. The keyword meta tag should include a good overall summary of the major keywords which are relevant to your site. Consider the most common landing pages for your website and create a meta tag which includes a keyword from each one.

Alone, your meta tags may not rank you highest within SERPs. However there is no denying that they still do play a part in SEO, so having strong meta tags is a step closer towards a high search ranking.

Link to us

If you want to link to this blog, copy and paste the following HTML code to your website.