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November 19, 2008
 Making the most of meta tags By jason

meta tags constantly come up in discussion regarding SEO. Before the year 1998, meta tags were very important…and savvy webmasters learned they could trick search engines to rank pages based on the keywords (and keyword density) contained in the meta tag fields. search engines eventually got wise to this trickery…and essentially stopped paying any precedence to meta keyword information. meta tags are part of the coding puzzle which comprises your website and most web developers include them automatically. Meta tags have a variety of uses, but we’ll only explore the SEO/SEM part of the spectrum. (for more information on meta tags and SEO, click here)

Now don’t get me wrong…meta tags are an important part of a website. The Meta Description, for example, is the text which may be displayed underneath the link to your site in the SERPs. The meta description should essentially be written as a message to a passer by, evoking them to visit the site. The meta keywords tag no longer holds any relevance with the search engines most companies want to target for SEM. So, in a nutshell, is placing meta tags important to make your site complete and help potential visitors understand what they’re looking at in the organic rankings…yes. Do meta tags (such as keywords and description) have a DIRECT impact on your organic ranking…no.

meta tags are somewhat helpful in identifying what your competitors might be targeting on the keyword front. When investigating a competitor’s site, look at ALL the tags on the page and dissect the backlinks pointing to the domain…this helps to understand why a page is ranking for a specific keyword. Essentially, meta tags can act as clues during the investigation.

A standard best practice for utilizing meta tags is to incorporate a handful of keywords you’re trying to target. Cramming several hundred terms into the field does nothing for you…and may even get you penalized (see more about keyword stuffing here). Focus more on the meta description, as people looking for your services will likely see that copy in the SERPs.

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Filed under: SEO — Tags: , , , — @ 3:45 pm

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