Do Your Website's Meta Tags Stand the Test

Every well designed website should have Meta tags. You might be asking yourself, "What are meta tags"? The short answer is Meta tags are a set of tags placed in the HTML header of your website to provide information to search engines about your website. You got it; the keyword here is search engines. As stated in a previous article, it is vital that you ensure your website is listed in the major search engines. Let's take this one step further and dissect the two major types of Meta tags.

Description Meta Tag

The description Meta tag is where you want to tell the search engines what your website is all about. You can think of the description Meta tag as the first impression of your website. When someone types in a search term in the search engines and your website is listed as matching that search term, the first thing they will see is the title and description of your website. If your description is not compelling enough your website may be overlooked time and time again. The end result would mean less traffic for you. So, let's take a look at what makes a good description:

1. First and foremost, your description must be relevant to your website. It should convey in a few words what your target audience should expect to get out of using your website. Your description should directly relate to both the title and the body content of your website. With that being said, every page on your website may not necessarily have the same description.

2. Although you want to make sure to use your main keywords in the description Meta tag, you do not want the description to be a complete reiteration of your keywords. The description should be full complete sentences making sure to be careful of any grammatical errors. Remember, the goal is to communicate to real people the essence of your website. To do so you must speak ("write") plain ole English.

3. Your description does not have to be really long to get your point across. The typical description is approximately 15 - 25 words long. This is equivalent to about 2 - 3 short sentences. Although there hasn't been an official word on what the description length needs to be, keep in mind there is only so much space available for your description in the search engine listings.

This list may not be all inclusive. However, it's a great start. To get a better fill of does and don'ts, search the internet using keywords relevant to your website and take a look at what the descriptions look like.

Keyword Meta Tag

The keyword Meta tag is probably the most important. This is where you would formulate a list of words that are directly related to your website. When someone types in a search term that fits your keywords your website could be one of the ones in the search engines listings. Typing in a group of words in the keyword Meta tag isn't as simple as that. There is a methodology to generating appropriate and good keywords that are suitable for your website. Let's take a look at a few things to keep in mind.

1. Don't use keywords that are not relevant to your website. Your keywords should consist of words that specifically describe what your website is all about. So if your website is geared towards web design, you should not use keywords relative to cookbooks. Sounds like common sense. However, you'd be surprised at how many websites use keywords that have nothing to do with their website.

2. You want to use keywords that are found in the body of your website. This increases the relevancy of your keywords. This does not mean that you should have lines of keywords imbedded into your website. Rather you should choose the words that are a part of the natural flow of your content. With that being said, it might serve you better to write the content of your website prior to identifying the appropriate keywords.

3. Generally, there are four areas to consider when incorporating your keywords in the Meta tag and the body of your website. These are density, frequency, prominence, and proximity.

a. Density refers to the number of times keywords appear versus all the words within the website. For example, if you have 500 words on a webpage and 250 are a particular keyword or keyword phase you would have a density of 50% which is way too high. Keyword density for each keyword or phrase should typically be between 2% - 6%.

b. Frequency refers to how often a keyword appears in the webpage. It is believed that the more a keyword appears the more relevant search engines see your webpage for that keyword. However, keep in mind that you do not want too high of a density. So if you want to use the same keyword over and over again make sure to have plenty of content surrounding the keyword.

c. Prominence refers to where the keyword(s) are found in the webpage. To achieve this remember to use your keywords in your title, description, at the beginning of the webpage, and the beginning of sentences.

d. Proximity refers to how close keywords are to each other. For example, consider the following two sentences:

"We design web sites"

"We specialize in web design"

If the keyword used in the search engines were "web design", the second sentence would be a better choice as it has the keywords web and design right next to each other.

There are many free tools on the internet that you can use to determine if your Meta tags past the test. Simply go to your favorite search engine and type in "free keyword analyzer" and see how you measure up.

For more tips for doing business online, visit us at www.doingbusinessonline.net

To your online success,

Nakisha Muhammad (Keyeraines)

Copyright 2008 Keyeraines Unlimited, Inc.

Nakisha Muhammad (Keyeraines), has a 12 year financial background in the mortgage industry. However, she has had a passion for technology starting at a young age. She is a fundamental programmer and web designer. She finds pleasure in researching and sharing her knowledge with others in hopes that they won't have to work as hard to learn what's she's learned. With that she started a website to be a true resource center for online/offline businesses. You can visit it at http://www.doingbusinessonline.net