How to Use the Magic of Meta Tags to Improve Your Rankings

1^st post in a 5-part series on SEO
Mention the word Seo to most people and they have visions of a magician who with a simple swoosh of his wand (while muttering abracadabra), gets your rankings to the top. I had fun with this title due to this common misconception. The truth is that there is nothing hokey-pokey or evenly remotely magical about meta tags. They give you an advantage and are important to use because:

• There’s always stiff competition to be on the top spot on Google, and anything that gives you a competitive advantage should be used in full measure. Especially since these days, your search listings are competing with images and videos which are gaining a priority in rankings.
• They increase rankings and click through rates. If you have an attractive title and enticing description, people are tempted and are bound to click through.
• Search engines are better able to index these pages. The rewards are an increase in visibility and rankings.
• Prepping your document with the appropriate meta tags, is one of a number of essential seo tasks before you publish any page or post on the web

Meta Tags

Meta tags are html tags that you place in the head of your document. They include 3 basic tags, namely:

• The title tag
• The description meta tag
• And the keywords meta tag

The good news is that you get plug-ins for WordPress that allow you to add in your meta data without touching a word of code. WordPress Seo by Yoast and All in One Seo Pack are excellent for adding in all your meta data. You don’t need to touch the header file of your document thanks to these plug-ins.

You can easily type in your meta tags (title, description and keywords) in a plug-in such as All in One Seo Pack for WordPress

If you want to enter in your meta data, without the plug-ins, then WordPress allows you to edit only the body of your document in the Posts section of it’s editor. In order to get to the head section of your page, to enter in your meta data, you need to access your page templates files that are stored in your server. Most themes have the head of the document tilted “header.php”. This is also true, for those of you who are using other Content Management Systems.

a. Unique and Accurate Page Titles

Html title tags:

<title></title>

Page titles are extremely important indicators (if not the most important) that inform search engine what your page is about. Here are pointers to keep in mind when creating your title tags:

• The title tag is not to be confused with your page heading. It belongs to your meta data and is the title that users see at the very top of your web browser.
• Your page titles must be 60 characters or less (W3 – World Wide Web Consortium also recommends less than 60 characters). Most search engines cut off titles after 60 characters.
• Since you have a limited number of characters, your title is precious real estate. You need to be very selective. Think like a user and type in search terms that you know the user will use. Some users will only look at titles so they need to be attractive to make the user want to click through, when your result shows up in search.
• Page titles for each page must be unique, and not repeated anywhere else on your site
• Best seo practice is to include your keyword in your page title preferably at the beginning of your title

Title of current page in Firefox

b. Description meta tags

Html description tags:

<meta name="description" content="" />

Description meta tags describe what your page is about and are displayed along with your title in search results. Here are some tips to keep in mind to make the most of your descriptions. Although description meta tags are discounted by Google for rankings, other search engines still use them for ranking articles.

• You are allowed 160 characters. Accurately describe the page, products etc in your description meta tags. Include words that users are likely to use to find the page.
• Include your keywords. Avoid keyword-stuffing. Try to also include a CTA (call to action) such as Read more, Find out, Learn all about….
• If you write an enticing description, it will increase your CTR (click through rate). Also, a meta description allows you to stand out from other sites that the user can click on.

Words in the snippet are bolded if they match the user’s query

c. Keywords

Html keywords tags:

<meta name="keywords" content="" />

Use as many synonyms, separated by commas, as you think the user may use to define this section. Even though keywords don’t affect rankings any more, search engines will show them up as snippets in search results if the user query matches the keywords.

Use Rich Snippets to Tag Your Meta Data

Google Webmaster Help have released a series of Rich Snippet videos to help you get started. Here is a quick introduction:

Snippets—the few lines of text that appear under every search result—are designed to give users a sense for what’s on the page and why it’s relevant to their query. You can help Google surface this relevant information by adding additional HTML markup to your pages. This markup helps Google recognize certain types of data and display it usefully in rich snippets.

In Google’s own words:

Rich Snippets are markup tags that webmasters can put in their sites in order to tell Google what type of content they have on their site so that we can better display it in search results.

Rich snippets are evolving in part due to a new initiative, schema.org (joint initiative of Bing, Google and Yahoo). Although this initiative is more than a year old, few websites have made the transformation. You could reap the benefits of improved visibility, since you will be at the forefront of using this structured markup.

Google supports rich snippets for these content types:

• Reviews
• People
• Products
• Businesses and organizations
• Recipes
• Events
• Music

More information about rich snippets is available on Google Webmaster Tools rich snippets page.

Here are some additional resources for learning more about meta tags and their use in Seo:
Google Webmaster Tools

Google’s Seo Starter Guide

Google’s Report Card

Do you use meta tags? What has been your experience with using them? Please share in the comments below.
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