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Crawler search engines now use what is actually
written on a web page to determine its content and its ranking.
But, that’s not to say, that they no longer read the
html text that has been embedded in the page by the programmer.
Known as meta tags, some unseen snippets of copy continue
to play an important role in SEO.
There are three meta
tags that require careful consideration: title, description
and keywords tags.
The Meta Title Tag
The Meta Title Tag should be a short, snappy
heading that accurately describes the content of the web
page.
Why is it useful?
The text in the title tag is
one of the most important factors in how a search engine may
decide to rank the page.
In addition, all major crawlers
will use the text of your title tag in their search results
listings
so it is key to securing ‘click
throughs’ from interested readers. It is also this copy
which is used as the title in bookmarks and in the bar at the
top of your browser.
The Meta Description Tag
The Meta Description Tag should summarise
the web page in around 25 words.
Why is it useful?
The copy in this tag often appears under
the meta title tag in the search engine results listings.
It will determine whether people choose to click through
to your web page or not.
The Meta Keywords Tag
The
Meta Keyword tag is a list (as long as you like) of
search keywords and phrases. These are the words that you expect
your
target reader to type into a search engine query.
Selecting the appropriate keywords is easier
said that done, however. They should be phrases that a)
your target audience regularly types into search engines
and b) phrases that not too many competitor web pages or
sites are optimised for.
Why is it useful?
The keyword tag is perhaps the
first thing to define for the page because it defines the keywords
and key phrases that need
to be woven into the viewable body copy as often as possible.
Contrary to popular belief, what you place
in the keyword tag itself will today have very little bearing
on what keywords your
site is actually found under. (It’s not given any consideration
whatsoever by Google, for instance.)
The general advice at the moment is that
you should use this tag, but you shouldn’t obsess over
it.
Take a look at the HTML text
If you’d like to see our meta tags
in action, try moving your mouse onto the toolbar at the
top of your web browser. Click on View and then Source to
have a look at the html text for this web page. You should
see the three meta tags that I’ve written for this
page under:
<title> [this is the title tag]
<meta name="description" content=" [this is the
description tag]
<meta name="keywords" content=" [this is the
keywords tag]
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