While there are many Meta Tags that can be used in the of your web page, there are a couple very important meta tags that you should be aware of.
I suppose every search engine optimization(SEO) expert has their own way of defining which meta tags are essential and which meta tags are no really necessary, but I am confident we can all agree that these should almost always be used.
With that said, these are my top 3 most important meta tags.
Important Meta Tags – #1 – Title
The title meta tag is not quite a ‘meta tag’, but is placed in the same area as meta tags which is in your area.
As an example, the title tag of this page is:
Important Meta Tags
Our goal is to potentially rank high for the keyword phrase “Important Meta Tags”.
Now, not to confuse you but there is actually a “title meta tag” that can also be used, but based on common belief is not really necessary. Though my personal feeling is that if you are trying to really beef up your in code SEO, why not use it? It probably is not going to hurt your case with the search engines.
There is some more information about this and other meta tags at the W3 site http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/global.html#h-7.4.4.
When Google or other search engines read your sites information, it uses this information to display when people search for relevant keywords to your page. In this example I have circled the the page Title shown for a search on “Meta Tags Explained”.
Important Meta Tags
Important Meta Tags – #2 – Description
The description meta tag is where you get to tell the search engines what you would like displayed when your site is returned on a search. If you do not use this meta tag, the search engine will grab some text from your content.
This is potentially a bad situation because it might not grab the most relevant information, which in turn may not help that person searching to click through to your website.
There is a limit on how many characters from this meta tag that will be displayed, so you do not need to write a huge compelling article to try and lure the person in. Instead keep it short, sweet, and straight to the point. Get their taste buds wet and use some calls to action to drive it home.
If you right click on this web page and then click ‘View Source’, you will be able to see the code for this page. At the top of the code you will see the meta tags…note the Description meta tag.
Notice that in this description we have dropped our keyword phrase important meta tags in there nonchalantly . By doing this, when someone searches for “important meta tags” and our website shows up in Google, that keyword phrase will be in bold.
Alternatively, had we spread those words out throughout the entire description, they would still be bold but not as eye catching as all three of them side by side.
Take a look at this example, I’ve circled the ‘description’ from my early serach for Meta Tags Explained. Also note the words “Meta Tags” are bold, my search term was ‘meta tags explained’:
Important Meta Tags
Important Meta Tags – #3 – Keywords
The next meta tag on my list of important meta tags is the keywords.
The keywords meta tag allows you to get very specific in regards to what your page is about. This is the place where you would put all of the ‘keywords’ you want the search engines to recognize your page for.
You need to separate the keywords with commas, and you can use as many keywords as you would like. I recommend you stick to using your keyword phrase exactly, and then maybe adding a couple variations of that.
Again, view the source of this web page and you will see our Keyword Meta Tag.
We’ve chosen to only use our keyword phrase so that the search engines know for a fact that this page is relevant for people searching for important meta tags. Some additional variations we might use would be
- Meta Tags that are Important
- Important SEO Meta Tags
- Search Engine Optimization Meta Tags
- and so on…
Keywords in your keyword meta tag will not be displayed in your search results, only your Title, Description, and URL. Instead, the keyword meta tag is used to directly speak to the search engine about the content on your website.
If you are using WordPress, an easy way to be able to edit these important meta tags is to install the All in One SEO plugin. When you activate this plugin you will be given form fields on each edit post and edit page that you do for Title, Description, and Keywords.
Alright, I hope that this short lesson has helped you get a grasp of the most important meta tags for search engine optimization. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to Contact us or leave a comment.
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