META Tags Explained
and How To Use Them For Ranking
The META tags are used to provide extra information about
a web page. There was once a time where a good search engine
ranking could be achieved by simply changing the value of
the META tags. However these days are long gone. Nowadays
the META Tags are decreasing in importance in the eyes of
the search engines who are using more sophisticated methods
of ranking pages (namely link popularity, optimized anchor
text).
There are many different types of META tags but the one that
can affect ranking are the Keywords META tag and the Description
META tag.
Keywords META tag
This tag contains keywords relevant to a page. In the past
search engines referenced this to determine how to rank a
particular page. However many people started to abuse this
and stuffed the tag with keywords that were not relevant to
the content of the page. This confused search engines and
subsequently returned weaker search results. To combat this
less and less emphasis has been placed on the Keywords META
tag. However this does not mean that it is entirely useless.
Here are some reasons to still include it:
* Some search engines still use it
Although most search engines do not use the tag there are
undoubtedly still some that do. For this reason place around
15-20 keywords relevant to your site or page into the tag.
Do not attempt to cheat the search engines by repeating keywords
as this is considered spamming and they may look unfavourably
on this.
* Account for misspellings of keyphrases
People can misspell certain keyphrases that you may be optimizing
for so it is common to place these misspellings into the Keywords
META tag. This allows you to rank in search engine results
for misspellings without having to represent them on the actual
content of your page.
Description META tag
In the past this tag was used to specify the text that would
appear in search engine results alongside the link to your
site. Keywords could be placed into this text to influence
ranking. However it was abused similar to the Keywords META
tag and has befallen the same fate, meaning it is not as useful
as it once was. Some search engines do not display it in their
results (most notably Google, which retrieves the text from
content on your page) and do not use it to rank a site. Having
said that some search engines do still use it so again it
is a mistake to ignore it completely.
Descriptions placed into this tag should, strangely enough,
be very descriptive of the page or site they reside in. Include
a few relevant keywords/keyphrases that you are optimizing
for in the description and try to limit its length to 25-30
words. Also try to use no more than two sentences.
Summary:
Although not as important as they once where, the META tags
can still influence a search engine when it comes to deciding
whether your web page is relevant or not.
Keywords META tag:
15-20 keywords, include misspellings of keywords/keyphrases
Description META tag:
Include keywords/keyphrases, 25-30 words, no more than two
sentences.
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