Meta Tags
Meta Tags are another important On-Page SEO factor. Although they are not as important for ranking as Title Tags they should not be ignored. There are two Meta Tags that you will learn about here.
- Meta "Description" Tag
- Meta "Keywords" Tag
The meta keywords tag is not very important and we won't really get to far into it. In short the meta keyword tag was used to tell the search engines what your site should rank for. This system was abused in the past and now has very little, if any impact on your search engine rankings. If your website provider gives you access to edit this tag you should still use it.
Meta Keyword tag tips: You should put a few keywords(5-10 will do) in this tag, they should be relevant to the page and they should be separated by commas. Do not stuff keywords(do not spam the same keyword) here as this can have a negative effect on rankings. If you have multiple keyword phrases that contain some of the same words try to not use more than three of that same word.
Meta Description Tag
The meta description tag is very important. It may have some impact on your rankings but the most important thing to keep in mind is that if done properly it can increase click-through from the search results page to your site.
The image below is the same search result image from the title tags page.
Beneath the blue hyperlinked text is some black text(I bet you coulda figured that out on your own). The black text you see there is usually the meta description of that web page.
To be sure your meta description shows in the SERP's(Search Engine Results Page's), you need to have one occurrence of the keyword searched, which in the image was "phoenix real estate". If you don't have the keyword that was searched in your description tag the engine will try to find the searched keyword somewhere on your page and display a snippet instead(this is not always the case but try to fit the keyword in there to be safe).
Your meta description should be used to pull the wary searcher in. (You know when your searching for something and every site you click through to is not what you were looking for. And you start to read the entire description before clicking through to a site. Then if that fails you refine your search.)
Tips for Meta Description Tags:
- Put your target keyword in there somewhere. Preferably somewhere that makes sense.
- Use a snippet from your page with the... to pull them in to get the rest.
- Put a phone number so they know you are real.
- Also you can try making your description a bit shorter than your competitors to create some white space around your result to draw attention to it. You might have to experiment with this one. I'd say around 105-115 characters(including spaces) or so. If you go so short that the engine only displays one line of text it will make your listing smaller. So there should be one line of text with maybe a couple words on the second line.
Now you need to get your home-page Meta Description Tag set up just like you did with your title tag.
Same as before, I can not tell you where in your online office you need to go to edit this as they are all different. Look for help in your website providers forums, FAQ, or support. They should be able to help you. Don't be afraid to call them for help. Let them know what you want to do and they should be able to help you.
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