How to Write Meta Tags and Descriptions
Have you ever visited a website and seen the home page meta tag just jammed with keywords that runs the entire length of the top of your computer monitor? If you have that is a great example of how you don’t want to construct your meta tags and descriptions. There is a lot of argument in the industry on the importance of meta tags and how valuable they are. Meta information alone might not increase rankings but once your website has the power to rank well the keywords in your meta information will steer your website towards the right audience you are looking for.
Your meta tags should always be created tastefully. Each page should target 3-5 keywords for your content and your meta information and it should be custom crafted to what is occurring on that specific page. Remember that your meta information needs to offer an explanation to the end user. Your meta information is what appears in the search engine results when you are searching for something specific in the search engines. At the very least you want to keep it clean and to the point so that a person using a search engine will be enticed to click on your meta tag and visit that specific web page. Each meta tag gives a snippet of information for the user to understand what the information on that page is referring to. If you just cram it with keywords the user experience will be horrible and you will end up losing website visitors very quickly. Search engines really don’t like when meta information sections of a website are stuffed with more keywords than they should be. Some websites have been known to generate penalties in Google for over stuffing meta information with keywords and phrases.
When it comes to crafting well written meta tags and descriptions they need to have a very tasteful approach. Website users and traffic are getting much smarter and when they see these types of approaches where information is being jammed into the meta tag information area it deters them from wanting to do business with you. Always keep it clean and relevant and your website will over time find the audience you are looking for.
13 Responses to “How to Write Meta Tags and Descriptions”
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Some good practices for title tags
• Choose a title tag which accurately describe the webpage content
• Choose a unique title tag for each page to help search engine know how the page is distinct from the others pages.
• Use the name of your website or brand at the end of every title tag to create brand awareness.
• Don’t stuff unneeded keywords in your title tags
• Use brief, but descriptive titles because Google display only approximately 65 characters of the title and some search engine display more.
• Use the most important keywords at the beginning of your title
• Use a separator like “|” or “-“ between keywords
• Using your title tag as H1 header can be very valuable
• Use relevant keyword phrases
• Choose the title tags keeping in mind the searcher not search engine
Well said Nick! I’ve seen a lot of companies out there jumping on the SEO Services bandwagon who could use this straightforward advice.
How can so much specific, useful information be crammed into such little space! You guys are terrific! Keep it up!!
The information was very informative and I will re-check my meta tags. I think it would have helped even more if you had added some examples of the meta tag layout.
I always think meta tags is very important although Google says that is not much important for search result.
Our website: http://www.herahair.com is doing like this and we are trying do better.
By the way, the above comment is very good, brief and clear. I like that.
Hi Michael,
Agreed! There are many newbie SEO companies that sometimes don’t grasp the importance of well written meta tags…
Agree. People keep telling me not to worry about meta tags any more however once you page is set up it you don’t need to usually make any changes so I think it is worth the effort.
@Bill Oneil if you want a few examples look at our web pages at http://www.acarda.com, you will see we target different keywords on different pages all to do with call center software and telemarketing software.
Great information, Nick. I agree 100%. In response to one of the other comments regarding format, I have found a fair amount of success for our clients using title tags with 50-70 characters (including spaces) in the format Key phrase 1 Geo target | Key phrase 2 or Key phrase 1 Geo target | Company Name. In page descriptions, I shoot for 150+/- characters using 2 primary key phrases early in a marketing style sentence, enticing the click-through. I hope that helps.
yep, great article! stuffing is not really going to be very well liked whether you’re a site visitor or a spider. well written tags and content rule!
Hi Shannon,
Great advice, thanks for the additional meta tag tips and for reading!
I am very grateful for this very valuable information. Great advice!
[...] How to Write Meta Tags and Descriptions: Provides general guidance on writing meta tags and descriptions, with strong warnings against over-stuffing meta information, with keywords and phrases. [...]
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