I review client’s websites regularly and I am shocked at the number of websites – built by professional web designers – that don’t have meta tags!
What are Meta Tags?
Meta tags are special tags that are put in the <head> section of the HTML website code. These tags aren’t setup up for web visitors but for the search engines.
The search engines use this information when crawling your website to help them organize, categorize and catalog your web pages. This information is used when users go to the search engine to search for your information or info related to your business.
There are several different Meta Tags but I am only going to cover the critical ones as well as the Title tag.
Title Tag
The title tag is the most critical. The title tag for your web page should be like the title of a book. It should convey what the page is about. I strongly recommend that you have keywords in the title tag.
NOTE: You only have 70 characters so think carefully about what you want to show. Google may pull the title tag as the title of the search results…
I just did a ‘Online Market Analysis’ for a local business who had this title tag:
<title>Home Page</title>
How awful is that!!?? They paid thousands of dollars for their website. They aren’t found in the search engines,, hhhmmmm wonder why?
Ok, since I don’t want to embarrass them, here is a good title tag for day spa:
<title>Day Spa Shelton CT | M Spa and Skin Care | Facials | Skin Care </title>
Meta Description Tag
The Meta Description Tag is the second most critical tag you need to use on your website. The Meta Description Tag describes the content of the web page. You only have 150 characters so keep it brief, engaging and keyword rich.
Again, Google may pull the description content to use in the description of the search results. Make is user and search engine friendly!
Meta Keyword Tag
The third tag I want to cover is the Meta Keyword Tag. In this tag you add the keywords for you web page. There are not limits on this but I would keep it to 3-5 keywords.
Other Meta Tags
There are several other important Meta Tags like the Meta Charset and Meta Language Tags. These help search engines read and understand your Web pages better no matter what language is used.
This tool will help you make Meta Tags for your website: SEO Tools
Linda
