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How to Use Meta Tags to Optimize Your Pages for the Search Engines
Good use of meta tags no longer makes you rank highly in the search engines, but bad use of meta tags can hurt your rankings. They're a minimum requirement for proper search engine optimization.
The first tag in the <head> section of your HTML page should be the <title> tag.
The proper format is:
<title>Your Page Title Here</title>
Do use capitalization as you would for book and movie titles. That is, the main words such as nouns, verbs and adjectives are capitalized, but conjunctions and prepositions are not. You should not use pronouns because somebody seeing your listing on a search engine results page would not know who "we, he, she, it and they" are.
The ideal title tag appeals to both search engines and your target market.
The ideal title tag is:
1. Short and catchy.
2. Contains the main keyword of your page.
3. Places the main keywords of your page as close to the beginning as possible.
4. Makes sense as a title to human readers.
5. Attracts your target audience.
6. Unique to every page.
Title tags should NOT be:
1. A string of keywords. ("Fish, Tropical Fish, Fresh Water Fish, Salt Water Fish, Bass, Trout")
2. Boring. ("Some Fish")
3. The same as any other page's title on your website. ("Bass," "Bass," "Bass" etc.)
4. Irrelevant to your website's subject matter. ("Home Page")
5. Repeat keywords. ("Fish, Fish and More Fish")
The next tag that goes in the <head> section of your HTML page is the description meta tag. The purpose of this is to give search engines and prospective visitors an idea of what your page is about. The proper format is:
<meta name="description" content="A fascinating, enticing description of your website goes here." />
The ideal description tag:
1. Is under 150 characters long.
2. Begins with or at least contains the main keyword of the web page's theme, plus several other different but still relevant keywords.
3. Sounds natural, interesting and enticing to target prospective visitors.
4. Runs on only one line -- do not hit ENTER while typing it.
5. Is one or two sentences following ordinary capitalization and punctuation rules.
6. Is unique on every page of your site.
Description meta tags should NOT be:
1. A string of keywords. ("Fish bass trout salmon")
2. Boring. ("This site is about fish.")
3. The same as any other page's title on your website. ("This page is about fish. This page is about fish. etc.)
4. Repeat keywords. ("Trout are the best fish, so this page is all about trout. How to catch trout, cook trout, and eat trout.")
The next meta tag to include tells the search engines your page's keywords. Here is where you should list all important and relevant keywords that appear on that page. The proper format is:
<meta name="keywords" content="keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3 etc" />
The ideal keywords tag:
1. Contains only important and relevant keywords. (Don't dilute this tag by throwing in every possible keywords including the kitchen sink.)
2. Contains only keywords that actually appear on that page.
3. Is unique on every page of your site.
4. Lists the keywords in order of importance.
The keywords tag should not contain:
1. Keywords not found on that particular web page.
2. Irrelevant keywords.
3. Unimportant keywords.
There you go. Follow these instructions and you have a chance to rank well and to attract clicks from people who see your title and description displayed in the search engine results pages.
The first tag in the <head> section of your HTML page should be the <title> tag.
The proper format is:
<title>Your Page Title Here</title>
Do use capitalization as you would for book and movie titles. That is, the main words such as nouns, verbs and adjectives are capitalized, but conjunctions and prepositions are not. You should not use pronouns because somebody seeing your listing on a search engine results page would not know who "we, he, she, it and they" are.
The ideal title tag appeals to both search engines and your target market.
The ideal title tag is:
1. Short and catchy.
2. Contains the main keyword of your page.
3. Places the main keywords of your page as close to the beginning as possible.
4. Makes sense as a title to human readers.
5. Attracts your target audience.
6. Unique to every page.
Title tags should NOT be:
1. A string of keywords. ("Fish, Tropical Fish, Fresh Water Fish, Salt Water Fish, Bass, Trout")
2. Boring. ("Some Fish")
3. The same as any other page's title on your website. ("Bass," "Bass," "Bass" etc.)
4. Irrelevant to your website's subject matter. ("Home Page")
5. Repeat keywords. ("Fish, Fish and More Fish")
The next tag that goes in the <head> section of your HTML page is the description meta tag. The purpose of this is to give search engines and prospective visitors an idea of what your page is about. The proper format is:
<meta name="description" content="A fascinating, enticing description of your website goes here." />
The ideal description tag:
1. Is under 150 characters long.2. Begins with or at least contains the main keyword of the web page's theme, plus several other different but still relevant keywords.
3. Sounds natural, interesting and enticing to target prospective visitors.
4. Runs on only one line -- do not hit ENTER while typing it.
5. Is one or two sentences following ordinary capitalization and punctuation rules.
6. Is unique on every page of your site.
Description meta tags should NOT be:
1. A string of keywords. ("Fish bass trout salmon")
2. Boring. ("This site is about fish.")
3. The same as any other page's title on your website. ("This page is about fish. This page is about fish. etc.)
4. Repeat keywords. ("Trout are the best fish, so this page is all about trout. How to catch trout, cook trout, and eat trout.")
The next meta tag to include tells the search engines your page's keywords. Here is where you should list all important and relevant keywords that appear on that page. The proper format is:
<meta name="keywords" content="keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3 etc" />
The ideal keywords tag:
1. Contains only important and relevant keywords. (Don't dilute this tag by throwing in every possible keywords including the kitchen sink.)
2. Contains only keywords that actually appear on that page.
3. Is unique on every page of your site.
4. Lists the keywords in order of importance.
The keywords tag should not contain:
1. Keywords not found on that particular web page.
2. Irrelevant keywords.
3. Unimportant keywords.
There you go. Follow these instructions and you have a chance to rank well and to attract clicks from people who see your title and description displayed in the search engine results pages.
