Which Meta Tags Are Still Useful for Your SEO Project?
September 29th, 2009 | by BillEgan |What is the most common seo issue that can be easily fixed? 
Which html meta tags tags are more important than others and should be more closely looked at?
Which are of little use for you seo project and can safely be ignored?
This is a brief overview of our experience in using meta tags.
The Title Tag:
The first of these tags is the title tag. We have found that incorrect use of title tags is easily the most common issue that prevents better seo results.
At or near the very top of each page you’ll see the title html tag, it’ll be something like, <title>Welcome to my company</title>.
Go to any browser, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera – and browse to any website. Now, at the top of the browser, click on View, Source (or Page Source, or View Source), this will show you the html for the web page you are viewing.
The title tag is one of the most important factors in achieving high search engine rankings. At Interleado we find that for 90% of websites we analyse (even those that have been well optimised) the title tag is easily the most common issue to be fixed for a given set of keywords. We have seen time and again that by properly optimising title tags, the keyword ranking will usually improve quickly.
The words that you put in between the title tags are very important and should be filled with your most important keywords. Out of all the tags, this is definitely the most important when used correctly.
So What are some key SEO Tips for Title Tag creation?
- Do not exceed 50 characters (including spaces)
- Keep your important keywords as far left as possible
- Write your Title tag for your audience first and the search engines second
- Include your company name
- Include keyword phrases
- Avoid title tag duplication
- Use a divider such as the “|” symbol to separate key phrases
- Write a title tag as if it is a header for a Google adword
The Description Tag:
The description tag can also be found at or near the top of the page when you view the source. It will look something like, <meta name=”Description” content=”The description of my web page here”>.
You will get the most benefit from this tag if you have a unique description for every page and you keep the description to about 200-250 words. For each unique description, pick 4-5 keywords and work them into the description.
Remember this is the tag that will be displayed with the search engine results returned after a keyword search is done. Therefore use it mainly to persuade visitors to click on the page.
The Keyword Tag:
The keyword tag will look something like this, <meta name=”Keywords” content=”my keywords here”>.
According to Matt Cutts of Google, the Google web search (the well-known search at Google.com that hundreds of millions of people use each day) disregards keyword metatags completely. They simply don’t have any effect in Google search ranking at present.”
Should you create a keyword tag?
Based on what Matt Cutts says above I would not bother.
The Language Attribute:
This is not regularly used and it does not provide any aid in search engine optimisation. This tag simply helps a search engine understand what language is used in a specific web page.
The Robots Attribute:
This Meta Tag prevents search engines from crawling into your website. For example if you have a recruitment website, you will not want individual CV’s to be indexed by the search engines.Another example would be a contact page – you do not need to have this page indexed by Google.
This attribute has no relevance for SEO.
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One Response to “Which Meta Tags Are Still Useful for Your SEO Project?”
By SEO Sheffield on Feb 12, 2010 | Reply
I agree with this totally. In my experience, using the keyword meta tag just alerts your competition to the keywords you’re trying to optimise for… don’t give the game away!