SEO - Optimized Metatags

There are two important Meta Tags and they are the meta description and meta keyword tags. Some search engines may display the meta description as part of the search results, but the meta keywords tags should not appear in search results.

The general consensus among SEO experts is that meta tags are dead. Even so, many of these same experts continue to use meta tags in their own sites.

For Google adding the Description Meta Tag won't result in a boost in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), but the description might be used for the description for your SERP listings in Google. Yahoo says they use the Keyword Meta Tag when it ranks a page. So it makes sense to add one for Yahoo and any other minor search engines that still use.

What do the Meta Tags Look Like?

You can add following in the head section of the web page:

 name="keywords" 
         content="KEYWORD1 KEYWORD2 KEYPHRASE1 etc. 
         about 30 to 40 unique words">

 name="description" 
         content="An accurate, keyword-rich description 
         about 150 characters">

Meta Description Tag Tips:

There are few important tips for good meta description tags:

• Use keywords in your meta description tag.
• Try not to repeat the words overly often, but try to use multiple syntaxes of your key words.
• There should not be more than 150 characters in a description meta tag of a single web page.
• Use a different meta description tag for each page, as each page is different and stands a better chance of being found if you place a good title and description on it.

Meta Keywords Tag Tips:

There are few important tips for good meta keywords tags. Please refer to previous chapter on identifying good keyword.

• Use synonyms.
• Use unique keywords.
• No need to repeat any given phrase.
• You can repeat any word an unlimited amount of time as long as each time it is part of a different phrase.

Robots Meta Tag:

The important Meta Tag that you may need sometime is the Robots Meta Tag which looks like this:

meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">

Using above meta tag you can tell to a spider or robot that you do not want some of your pages indexed or that you do not want your links followed.