SPOILER ALERT!
Why Optimise Your Meta Tag Descriptions
short article today to discuss the subject of why it's important to optimise your meta-tag descriptions. These descriptions are located between the head and head tags of your web pages. Visitors to your web pages don't actually see them but they play an important role in describing the page content for search engines.
Meta-tags are used by some search engines to create descriptive passages known as snippets. These are the passages of text we see below a page title on search engine results. Here is an example from a Google search for "meta tags":
Meta element - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Title)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_element‎ (Website)
Meta tags can be used to indicate the location a business serves: ... Yahoo! meta titles - how to update claims support for the keywords meta tag in conjunction with other factors for ... (Snippet)
Your tags don't actually carry any weight in the search engine algorithm used by Google to determine page ranking but for some other search engines such as Yahoo they are important.
The biggest issue seen with meta descriptions of web pages is the fact that they remain static. Many web developers only include a general description of a website specific to the home page. This may not be relevant to other pages on the site and the meta-tag can be to generic for these other pages.
If your visitors land on an internal page (possibly an individual blog post) via a search engine, the tag may be the same as the home page and not contain relevant information that relates to the specific page. There are some good SEO tools that can be used to check the quality or your descriptions; here are a few terms worth searching for more details:
Backlink Analysing Tools.
Keyword Research Tools
Domain Name Online Tools
Search Related Online Tools
Website Traffic and Demographics Tools
To best optimise your descriptions they must be 'dynamic', that is including the first few lines of text of each individual page on your website. The alternative its to create short page descriptions that use appropriate keywords. If you are using a WordPress platform for your blog or website you can simply make the meta-tag description an exact copy of your post excerpt.
You can also install a plugin called 'Head META Description' and insert the suggested code in your header section. By using this code the plugin will automatically generate a meta-tag description for each of your pages by either using the first few words of the posts or by displaying the post excerpt you define. The plugin allows you to configure this how it works best for you.
If you have any tips to share with us about optimising your meta-tags we would love to hear from you. Perhaps you have a WordPress plugin that you use or an SEO tool that helps improve your met-tags. Leave us a comment with your suggestions to improve meta-tag usage.
Meta-tags are used by some search engines to create descriptive passages known as snippets. These are the passages of text we see below a page title on search engine results. Here is an example from a Google search for "meta tags":
Meta element - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Title)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_element‎ (Website)
Meta tags can be used to indicate the location a business serves: ... Yahoo! meta titles - how to update claims support for the keywords meta tag in conjunction with other factors for ... (Snippet)
Your tags don't actually carry any weight in the search engine algorithm used by Google to determine page ranking but for some other search engines such as Yahoo they are important.
The biggest issue seen with meta descriptions of web pages is the fact that they remain static. Many web developers only include a general description of a website specific to the home page. This may not be relevant to other pages on the site and the meta-tag can be to generic for these other pages.
If your visitors land on an internal page (possibly an individual blog post) via a search engine, the tag may be the same as the home page and not contain relevant information that relates to the specific page. There are some good SEO tools that can be used to check the quality or your descriptions; here are a few terms worth searching for more details:
Backlink Analysing Tools.
Keyword Research Tools
Domain Name Online Tools
Search Related Online Tools
Website Traffic and Demographics Tools
To best optimise your descriptions they must be 'dynamic', that is including the first few lines of text of each individual page on your website. The alternative its to create short page descriptions that use appropriate keywords. If you are using a WordPress platform for your blog or website you can simply make the meta-tag description an exact copy of your post excerpt.
You can also install a plugin called 'Head META Description' and insert the suggested code in your header section. By using this code the plugin will automatically generate a meta-tag description for each of your pages by either using the first few words of the posts or by displaying the post excerpt you define. The plugin allows you to configure this how it works best for you.
If you have any tips to share with us about optimising your meta-tags we would love to hear from you. Perhaps you have a WordPress plugin that you use or an SEO tool that helps improve your met-tags. Leave us a comment with your suggestions to improve meta-tag usage.
