Meta Tag How To

A quick post about meta tags this morning – Some of you may find this a
bit simple and a no brainer, though the amount of times I’m asked how
tags should be used and witness large popular website using meta tags
incorrectly I figured this post would not go to waste.

So, a few years back meta tags where the be all of search engine
optimization (SEO). Without meta tags your web pages would have been
practically invisible to search engines, engines now have become much
smarter and relying on meta tags to help boost your search traffic has
been shifted down the “SEO to do” check list, replaced with content and
links, that said, it’s still important to include them in EVERY page on
your website.

Including meta tags on every page of your website may seem like a
massive pain in the web optimization bum and a waste of time, though it
should be done and done correctly. Like any other job, a job worth
doing is worth doing well, following the below “META TAG HOW TOO” points
will see you get first prize in my meta tag best practice competition,
your prize: bountiful free search engine traffic.

• Keyword research, find out what people are searching for and use these keywords and terms in your tags
• Make sure all meta tags are UNIQUE to EACH page on the site
• Include the more popular search terms in the <Title> tag of your webpage
• When writing the description <META name=”description”
  content=”"> try and keep this limited to two sentences, keep your
  description short, concise and to the point
• Use keywords from your research in the meta description
• Compile your list of keywords and include these in the <META name=”keywords” content=” “> tag.
• Separate your keywords with a comma
• Include synonyms etc
• 25 – 30 keywords and phrases maximum
• Avoid including keywords and phrases that are not used in the content of the page
• Do not get lazy and copy paste your tags into other pages thus creating duplicate tags

There’s a variety of other meta tags you can include to further help target your pages and
content, for more information about these I suggest you check out the following couple of links:

AddMe Meta Tag Tool

HTML Meta Tag

Meta Element – Wikipedia

If you have anything to contribute please do so via the comment field below.

cheers for now!