Meta tags are an essential part of SEO Basics 101. However, some meta tags are WAY more important than others. This series of blog posts will teach you about what meta tags you should be taking advantage of- and which don’t matter much at all.
What are meta tags? They’re the part of your website that allows you to describe your website to search engines, located in the <head> part of your website’s code. This part of the site is not seen by visitors, but is used by search engines to identify a site.
Part 1: The Meta Description
The Meta Description is an important tag, although not because it helps with rankings. In fact, it has nothing to do with SEO, and won’t help boost rankings. However, it is a fabulous, free online marketing tool. Why?
Because this is where you can write the description that shows up after your website on a search engine results page (or SERP.)
Let’s use an example: perezhilton.com, a guilty pleasure of mine. If for some absurd reason you dislike celebrity gossip, (or are sick of hearing about Charlie Sheen) feel free to follow along your favorite blog.
- Go to Google and type in “perezhilton.com.” Read the site description. “Since 2004, Since 2004, Hollywood’s most sassy website has been delivering the juiciest celebrity gossip. The blog is The go-to source for daily happenings in Hollywood …”
- Go to perezhilton.com
- Find “View” in your web browser’s menu.
- Click on “Page Source” or “Source.” Don’t worry about the confusing parts of the code- we are just looking for a line that starts with <meta name=”description” content=…>
As you can see, Perezhilton.com’s source code shows this:
<meta name="description" content="Since 2004, Hollywood's most sassy website has been delivering the juiciest celebrity gossip. The blog is The go-to source for daily happenings in Hollywood. Written by the internet's most notorious gossip columnist, Perez Hilton (Mario Lavandeira)."/>
So, the meta description is where you define your site for a SERP (search engine results page, for those of you who weren’t paying attention earlier.) This means that the meta description tag can be a powerful marketing tool to get people to your website. A well written, compelling blurb will certainly get more visitors than one that is blank, poorly written, or simply generic.
When this form isn’t filled out, Google will just take information from your site and put what it thinks is most appropriate- usually the first sentence of your home page.
Rules for the Meta Description Tag:
1. Keep it short! Note that PerezHilton’s meta description is cut off. That’s because most search engines only allow 155 characters (around 25-30 words.)
2. Keep it unique! To take advantage fully of the meta description, you should have totally different content rich descriptions for every single page of your website.
3. Keywords don’t matter! You can use keywords if you want, but Google doesn’t consider the meta description in its ranking algorithm, so it’s not as important as you might think.
4. No numeric/non-alpha characters! Things like # $ % “ will cause Google to truncate your description. (Don’t ask me why. I just know it’s true.) So stick with words.
Next Week in our SEO Basics series:
Part 2: The Meta Keyword.
Feel free to download our glossary if you are interested in more SEO basics.
POSTED: Friday, February 24, 2011
