Meta Tags and SEO

This article will give you a quick how to guide on creating and optimizing three main meta tags in your web pages. Most content management systems make it easy to control these SEO compontents. So I’m going give the beginner a quick lesson on how to optimize meta tags.

How to Properly Optimize Your Meta Tags?

The first step to successfully optimize your meta tags is to use as many characters as you’re given access to. Your title tag and your meta description tag is the first introduction that new visitors will have to your brand, as they encounter this information in your website’s snippet in the organic search results. Given how vital this space is, why wouldn’t you try to maximize the number of characters you are given?

As a general rule, you should aim for the following character limits within each of your meta tags:

  • Page title – 70 characters
  • Meta description – 160 characters

How to Pick Keywords?

Do some research and pick keywords that are relevant and searched often in your industry. You can use Google Adwords for this or tools that cost money like Moz or Up City. You know your company, and industry best so start there and start building your building your web pages.

How to write a Page Title?

Good

SEO Services | Maudience Marketing Agency – Marketing and SEO Leaders

Bad

SEO Services | Maudience SEO Agency, SEO Marketers, and SEO Consultants

The top page title flows and looks professional. The bottom is overkill and looks like desperate SEO practices. The second title tag would be considered “Keyword Stuffing” which has been proven to negatively effect SEO results.

Meta Descriptions

Meta Descriptions are all about showcasing your web page to the public. If your webpage were a commercial, the meta description would be its slogan.

Do Meta Descriptions count towards your SEO?

Technically no, but indirectly, yes. Meta descriptions are an imporant factor in your SEO since Google collects behavioral search information and tailors search results to what you’ve previously searched. Google collects information on what sites you’ve been to and factors that into search results as well. So this makes the meta description a crucial part of your SEO. If you can get a visitor to your site once, your overall ranking the next time around will be higher. So this makes your meta description very important in the overall scheme of your SEO strategy.

Bad

How to Create Good SEO

This article will talk about SEO, and how to improve your title tags, meta descriptions, and meta keywords.

Good

A How to Guide on SEO and Meta Tags

Do you need help with your SEO and Meta Tags? Find out how to craft exciting and useful meta tags and maintain proper SEO.

The bottom is obviously more appealing than the top and reveals a pain point that many marketing specialists have. Writing Meta Descriptions is just as important as writing compelling copy for your marketing material.

Testing and Studying

Remember, you can always test out and refine the effectiveness of your meta tag content by changing the information stored in these web page fields periodically. If you see a spike in organic search traffic upon making a change, it’s possible that you’ve hit on a winning combination of meta tag text. Make a note and keep it going! On the flip side if you have some pages with high page ranks make an adjustment to the meta tags and see the page ranks the following month.

 

Author

Mark Vande Haar, Founder and Account Executive for Maudience