< CFcoffee />

Meta tags are NOT a magic solution to your website appearing at the top of Search Engines. However they do give the site owner some control over how their website is perceived by the search engines. But lets not forget the other important uses of Meta tags such as containing information vital to the correct operation of software like page readers for the blind. It's important to know how to use Meta tags properly and what if any influence they can have on your website rankings.

What is Meta Tag?

Meta Tags are generally placed within the HEAD of a HTML page. These HTML tags can provide the search engines or browsers rendering the content with important information relevant to the webpage. This information could be anything from determining the subject of the page to telling the browser what 'character set' to use.

In this post I am only going to write about two of these tags, 'Title' and 'Meta Description'.

Title Tag

Ok, this is not really a Meta tag, however it's often seen as one and has two important functions on a webpage.

First, the Title tag is crucial for search engines and is one of the factors in how search engines may decide to rank your website in their results. In addition some crawlers/spiders may use the text of your title tag in their listings to describe your webpage. Your Title tag will also be used as the name in bookmarks (if not changed by the user) and in browser reverse bar.

When writing a Title tag think about the key terms you'd like your page to be found for in crawler-based search engines, then incorporate those terms into your title tag in a short, descriptive fashion. Make sure the title always describes the page.

Description Tag

The description tag is your change to tell the search engines or other content readers what the page is all about.

Meta description tags don't really affect the rankings of your pages, having duplicated or short tags may do! Google, for instance, will display A title line, two lines of text from the meta description (up to 160 characters/spaces) and the site URL. A short Meta Description is a lost opportunity to deliver a better message that would result in more visitors.

In some cases you may notice that search engines such as Google listed a description in their results but you did not use a Meta description tag, so why does it matter to you and why include one?

Well if you don't list a description tag or your current description tag is short, duplicated or malformed they either a snippet derived from the content of the page itsself or – if Google chooses - the text description from your entry on the DMOZ website wil be used.

Google has automated this action. However if you write the meta description correctly, Google is more likely to use your text. The advantage of using the text you create in a description tags means you get to control over your message. Think of your entry in the search engine results pages as a 'Small Ad'; searchers are more likely to click on your entry if the message is persuasive, powerful and targeted.

Here are some direct quotes from the Google Webmaster guidelines:

How to create good meta descriptions

• Differentiate the descriptions for different pages. Using identical or similar descriptions on every page of a site isn't very helpful when individual pages appear in the web results. In these cases we're less likely to display the boilerplate text. Wherever possible, create descriptions that accurately describe the specific page. Use site-level descriptions on the main home page or other aggregation pages, and use page-level descriptions everywhere else. If you don't have time to create a description for every single page, try to prioritize your content. At the very least, create a description for the critical URLs like your home page and popular pages.
• Include clearly tagged facts in the description. The meta description doesn't just have to be in sentence format; it's also a great place to include structured data about the page. For example, news or blog postings can list the author, date of publication, or by-line information. This can give potential visitors very relevant information that might not be displayed in the snippet otherwise.

To prevent Search engines using your DMOZ description:

If you have already made the mistake of letting Google use your DMOZ description then dont worry.

To prevent all search engines (that support the meta tag) from using this information for the page's description, use the following:

To specifically prevent Google from using this information for a page's description, use the following:

If you use the robots meta tag for other directives, you can combine those. For instance:

Note: that once you add this meta tag to your pages, it may take some time for changes to your snippets to appear in the index.

Give Me The Simple Rules...

Here are the simple rules to follow.

• The page title (it shows as the very top line on your internet browser) must contain your key phrase or phrases.
• Start the page title with your keywords if possible.
• The page title should not be a list of words, consider it a short strap line.
• A maximum of about 150 characters/spaces
• The meta description is your chance to 'Sell' the page. Make it relevant to the searcher and to the page content