I deal with many questions from curious website owners everyday.
One question I have a new answer for is, "Should I use META tags on
my site when do search engine optimization?" Old Answer: It
couldn't hurt, but don't worry about them, the search engines
ignore them for the most part. New answer? Read on...
Laptop Battery Should I really use a META tag? Really?
Tips on Search Engine Positioning (Part II) We continue with our series on Search Engines and this month, we focus on Search Engine Optimization. Search engine optimization, also known as search engine placement and positioning, is the process of improving and enhancing a website's internal elements (such as titles, meta tags, textual content) and external factors (such as link and click popularity) to achieve high search engine rankings.
Thinkpad The new answer is yes, you should use META tags on your site.
The keyword META tag is still not used by search engines but when
submitting to directories, a valuable use of time by the way, the
META keywords are used in many cases to automatically fill in the
keywords for your site in that directory.
There are two types of optimizations that you need to follow to make a web page search engine optimized. Same is the case with Adsense Optimization. Internal Optimization includes Meta tags, Title Text, Optimization of content, and internal linking of your website. Here we will learn how to increase relevancy of ads and how to inject keywords that will help you get high paying ads. Internal Optimization has a high impact on the relevancy of ads and CTR.
Microsoft Even more amazingly, the META description tag has soared in
importance. How so you ask? Google has started showing the META
description in its search results when certain criteria are
met.
eBay suggests that store owners use basic SEO (search engine optimization) techniques to promote stores in the search engines. Every eBay Store comes with its own personalized website address so the owner can drive buyers directly to her store. For example, owners can customize their keywords on every store page and eBay uses these pages to create meta tags for the page. If done properly, this might result in some search engine results. style listings which have zero control over the pages on which they appear.
Laptop Computers The criteria being used appears to be very simple, unlike many
of the other things Google does. When the keyword or search terms
appear in the META description, the META description is used
instead of the snippet of text containing the keyword on your
page.
Whatever you put in the description meta tag, it will appear as description right after the Title Text that links to your page in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). This property of the description meta tag makes it quite important, as it has direct impact over the CTR of your link in the SERPs that leads to your website. It eventually decides how much traffic you will get from a search engine. Write description that attracts right kind of traffic from search engine pages.
Laptop Computer For example, if you do a search in Google for 'Big Oak SEO' you
will see our site in the first listing and the description used is
our META description tag. All three words being searched for are
also in our META description.
Meta Tags. The use of meta tags has been the most popular method of improving sites' ranking in search engines. Many of the main search engines give high importance to meta tags in positioning websites. However, it is also the method that is most open to abuse by webmasters attempting to trick search engines into giving their site a higher ranking. Do not use more than 25 keywords in your meta tags. Also, do not use more than 50 words in your description. Furthermore, do not put commas between keywords in your meta tags.
Desktop Computer If you do a search for 'big oak client' you will see the first
listing is pulling a snippet of text from the page itself. Since
'client' is not in our META description, it uses a snippet of text
from the page where all three words can be found.
Notebooks Where should you use a META description tag?
Lenovo Every website should use a META description tag on the
home page at the very least.
This way you can say exactly what you want and not worry the
snippet of text being used is not
best choice for your message.
What this really means is Google is giving us some measure of
control.
Hard Drive And now that we have this knowledge and control, how best to use
it? This allows us to take off our search engine optimizer hats and
don our search engine marketer hats. Think of what you can say in
the brief sentence that will entice a user to click your link
rather than the one above or below. You can put your phone number
in the META description for starters or how about being really
creative and offer a discount or advertise a sale. Tell them your
unique selling proposition. It should be a one sentence phrase
already in your head. The only caveat to remember is that your META
description will only show if the search term is in the META
description. While this can be tricky, it can be done with some
forethought. You can do this for all of your targeted pages and
have dozens of marketing messages.
Travelstar Use the META description wisely: target your market and entice
your customers. Do not abuse this control and put outlandish,
untrue or slanderous statements as I am sure Google will be
watching; and if this technique is abused the META description may
have seen its last search result this time.
Gateway About The Author:
Shell Harris is the founding partner for Big Oak, a Virginia-based
Search Engine Optimization & Internet Marketing Company. Big
Oak does it all, marketing, writing design and development and does
it well. Let Big Oak SEO help your Internet
business grow. Visit
http://www.bigoakinc.com for proven and documented results
online.
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