First-generation website designers discovered that meta data held the power to put their sites at the top of search rankings. Of course, this meant that many people started taking advantage of meta data through stuffing and the inclusion of popular yet non-relevant keywords. But as the search engines became smarter over time, they realized that many designers were manipulating the system to effortlessly move up the search engine results pages. Because of this, search engines ceased to use meta data in their search ranking algorithm. But does this necessarily mean that it’s all right to disregard meta data as well? Not really. It’s still actually part of SEO best practices.
What Is Meta Data?
Meta data contains a short summary of your website or page that provides search engines a way of understanding what your site is all about. Met tags are not visible to human users, but they can be read by search engine spiders. So it’s safe to say that it’s one of the things that search engine crawlers look into. In fact, Google gets a website’s description from its meta data.
For illustration purposes, let’s say that your targeted keywords are “organic soap”, “environment-friendly cleansers” and “cruelty-free handsoap.” Here’s an example of meta data using those keywords:
<title>Lucien’s Green Cleansers: Cruelty-free, Organic Soap</title>
<meta name=”description” content =”Buy cruelty-free, organic cleaners and green soaps and avail of our free shipping! Lucien’s Green Cleansers are good not only for your body but also for the environment!”>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”Lucien’s Green Cleansers, Organic Soap, Cruelty-free Handsoap”>
Notice the three types of meta data above: title, description, and keywords. Let’s discuss them in detail.
1. Meta Title
This is the text that appears on the link pointing to your website on a search results page. It also appears at the top part of your web browser’s window. It’s one of the first things that a search engine crawler sees and also the first thing about your website that a potential human visitor notices. If your title tag contains the keywords that the person used for searching, then he/she will most likely click on your link and visit your website. Take note that search engines starts cutting off the title after about 70 characters so you should include your most significant keywords, if it’s possible to make them all fit without looking spammy.
2. Meta Description
While most search engines don’t consider this meta tag in determining your website’s ranking, it doesn’t mean that you should ignore it altogether. In fact, both Bing and Google encourage website owners to include brief but informative descriptions because they will appear in a search engine results page below a website’s title. Because the title should normally be approximately only 70 characters, then not much about your site or page can be said. This is precisely the reason why the meta description matters. It’s like your page’s sales pitch. In case your page’s title isn’t enough to convince users to come and visit your site, then the meta description is where you can persuade users some more. But keep in mind that you should limit the meta description to a maximum of 150 characters. Also, you should have a unique meta description for every single page of your website. Because each page has a unique content, then their meta tags should also be different.
3. Meta Keywords
This will tell search engine spiders which keywords you’re targeting for a specific page. Because human visitors will never get to see this portion, it means that it’s really designed for search engine bots. While Google has announced that they won’t consider meta keywords in their search algorithm, SEO experts still place importance on this meta data because Google isn’t the only search engine around. Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines say that they still give weight to meta keywords.
Meta keywords also help website owners by giving them a way to record the targeted keywords per web page. Hence, they can use meta keywords as a reference in their link building campaign whenever they want to know what anchor text their inbound links should use.
A Final Word
Meta tags definitely won’t define the success of your SEO campaign. In fact, they probably won’t contribute a thing to your website’s ranking in search engine results pages. But for a holistic SEO program, it would be best to include it in your strategy along with clean code, high-quality and relevant content, canonical URL, and other SEO best practices. Well-researched and informative meta tags will definitely keep your keywords organized, provide your visitors with accurate information, and enhance their user experience.
