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| How to Write Perfect Metadata Tags for SEO |
Search engine optimization for any website is
fundamentally all about publishing relevant content keeping in mind that the
pages are written for users and not for the search engine. Regularly updated
content is another good indicator of a site’s relevancy other than basic best
practices like Title Metadata & Description Metadata. Keyword Metadata was
once an essential factor but in recent algorithm updates, its significance has
dropped considerably. However, we can still include them with conversational
phrases rather than the traditional approach of 2-3 word key phrases. But how
much of this effort will actually help in with your sites SERP rankings is
inconclusive.
Focus on creating a link-worthy site by the inclusion of
relevant links within the text. For e.g. “Click Here” at the end of a paragraph
explaining say "Yahoo Business Programs" has no search engine significance beyond
the attached URL. Whereas “Yahoo Business Programs” in place of “Click Here” is
a keyword rich phrase that will improve the search engine score for the website
where the text was added as well as the page where the text is linking to.
Other elemental inclusions include H1-H6 tags, alt tags
or alternate text description tags for visual & video media, title attributes
to add additional content onto your pages to be picked by search engines, SEO
friendly URL that includes the primary keyword of the web page, quality inbound
& outbound links, creating sitemap among the primaries that will justify
your efforts for higher search engine rankings.
What are Meta Tags?
HTML Meta Tags are
page data tags placed between the opening & closing head tags in the HTML
code of a document that are capable of being read by a computer and thus
telling the web browsers & other web services specific information about a web
page.
The Title Tag
According to W3C, the title tag is a mandatory element
for SEO that appears in the head block of a web page. Although there is much
debate about the inclusion of title tag as a component of Meta Tag, there is no
debate about the fact that they are an important element in the optimization
scope of a web page.
Title tags must contain the primary keywords of the web
page to tell the users & search engines what the web page is about and
makes people decide whether to visit the site when it shows up in the search
results.
Check out the following post to know all about “How
to write Title Tags for Search Engine Optimization.”
The Description Meta Tag
Description Meta Tags should not ideally be longer than
155 characters (including spaces) and helps websites in three important ways:
Tells the search
engine what your webpage or site is about: Writing a good description
ensures that Google’s algorithm will not replace it with a machine like
inaccurate version of what the page is about. It’s always preferable to
describe your site to potential users using your own words. Check out this
example & be the judge:
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| Well Written Meta Description Vs Automated Google Description |
Helps with click
through rates to your site: A well written description not only tells
your users what is on your site but also entices them to visit your site. Sites with lesser or inaccurate description will not only result lesser click
through but also demote the site in favor of other sites.
Helps with site
rankings: Good description relevant to the information on a web page
ensures that your site will be ranked better as compared to other sites with
inaccurate or irrelevant data.
Follow three golden rules when it comes to writing a
perfect description for your webpage:
·
It should be a quick summary of your content
·
It should stimulate a reason to read the content
·
It should written in less than 155 characters
Meta Tag Descriptions appear on both Google+ &
Facebook social media network and therefore enhances the possibility of
encouraging people to read and re-share the post, thus giving your social
sharing efforts a more persuasive power.
The Keyword Meta Tags
Like we mentioned earlier, Keyword Meta tags are long
lost fossils & the evolution of newer efficient search engine algorithms demands
that you take these tags out of your page code to reduce page weight and load
times. Only Microsoft’s Bing uses the Keywords Meta Tag to help detect spam and
is best advised to never add this tag to avoid hurting your site.
Other Meta Tags
There are quite a few other Meta tags that tells the
spiders when to come back, content distribution, refreshing a page or page redirection
that are being vehemently advised by Google not to follow. Rather, recent
updates like Schema Tagging & rich
data snippets are the skylight to the future as to how your site interacts
with search engines and the search spiders or bots.
Robots Meta Tags
From the perspective of implementation about what is
properly & improperly implemented, the robots tag is vitally crucial as it
specifies if a particular page should or should not be indexed or if you want
your links to be followed & not followed by search engines for indexing
& SERP rankings.
There are four vital implementations of the Robots Meta
Tag:
- <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">
This means that both your page will not be indexed and
your links to other pages will not be followed by search engines.
- <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="INDEX, NOFOLLOW">
This means that your page will be indexed but your links
will not be followed by search engines.
- <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, FOLLOW">
This means that your page will not be indexed but the
links to other pages will be followed by search engines.
- <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="INDEX, FOLLOW">
This means that both your page & links will be
indexed & followed by search engines.
The Charset Tag
The Charset Tag is the character encoding on your site
and should be the first line of your HTML after the root & head elements
and ensures that the browser knows that character encoding is doing anything
else with the site. Just ensure that your HTML reads:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
To conclude, writing the perfect HTML Meta Tags for your
website will surely guarantee that you are in the good books of the search
engines & their respective bots but the corroborative relation between good
& bad SERP rankings purely depends on well written content. Therefore the
key is to collaborate your good writing skills for both your website content
and Meta Tags, and your efforts will definitely ensure the elusive rankings
that we all strife for!
Extraction Source:
http://www.mtu.edu/umc/services/web/seo/
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2067564/How-To-Use-HTML-Meta-Tags
http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2012/02/essential-guide-to-meta-descriptions/
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