What are Meta Tags?

Meta tags are usually inserted in the heading section of your website’s html code.  They are often used by search engines to help determine your ranking.  Within these tags you can enter descriptions and keywords, which can help the spiders or bots to understand the purpose of your website. 

To see the meta tags of a web page you’re viewing on Internet Explorere, click on “View” at the top, which brings down a drop menu, then click “Source.”  This shows you the html code of the website.  The meta tags appear like this:

            <meta name="description" content="This is a where the description is entered." />

            <meta name="keywords" content="This is where the keywords are entered. " />

How Do Meta Tags Benefit Me?

Entering relevant keywords in the Meta tags of your web pages can help improve your ranking with search engines.  This, in turn, can increase traffic to your website.

Some search engines even use this info as the source of the description displayed to searchers looking for specific info.  A well-written description can entice searchers to click through to your website over others.

Note: Because of wide spread abuses in the past, many search engines completely ignore the keywords Meta tag.  Even so, it’s a good idea to still use the keywords Meta tag to help with your keyword density. 

How Do I Choose Keywords to Enter in Your Meta Tags?

Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool

Overture offers a great tool that suggests search terms for your website marketing strategies. It actually monitors the number of terms people are actually searching on. These search terms can be used as keywords in your website.

You enter general keywords that relate to your site (in the example that follows, we used “used cars”). It returns a list of similar search terms ranked according to popularity.

1. Go to http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/.

2. Type your general keywords ([used cars] in this example) into the box circled below. Click the blue button, or press return: 

3. The tool returns a list of search terms ranked according to the number of times they were used in searches over the last month. Jot them all down, or print the page. You never know when they might come in handy.

4. Try a more specific search, say [Seattle used cars]:

Notice that fewer searches were performed on the more specific phrase (a thousand as compared to a million), but the searchers in this case were more qualified for a website about used cars in Seattle.

If you compare the way people search with the way search engines find websites, an interesting pattern emerges:

There are more searches for general terms like “cars” – 3 million, or “used cars” – 1 million. But there are also more websites competing for their attention – 68 million and 10 million respectively.

There are fewer searches for specific phrases like “used cars Seattle,” but there also fewer sites that fit the phrase. And searchers looking for something specific are more likely to convert into sales.

If you focus on more specific key phrases throughout your website, your website listing is more likely to be seen by qualified traffic ready to do business with you. You are also competing with fewer websites.

Building your website around specific phrases instead of single words is an easy way to make your website stand out from the Internet crowd.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

Google offers a similar tool through its AdWords program. You enter general keywords that relate to your site (in the example that follows, we used “used cars”). It returns a list of other keywords, some similar, some more specific, that you may not have considered.

1. Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox.

2. Type your general keywords into the box circled below:

3. Highlight the language and countries you want to consider.

4. Click “Show matching queries and alternatives.”

5. The tool returns lists of words grouped as shown above. Jot them all down, or print the page. You never know when they might come in handy.

How Do I Write Descriptions and Keywords for My Meta Tags?

Here are some general rules about writing for meta tags:

·         Keep meta description and meta keyword tags under 200 characters in length.  When you use too many keywords you end up diluting the importance of each one, meaning potentially lower rankings in the search engines.

·         In both your description and keyword meta tags, place the most important words first.  This helps you achieve higher rankings as most search engines consider the first few keywords the most important in their ranking criteria.

·         Always use lower case letters in your keyword meta tags because most search engines aren’t case sensitive.

·         Don’t repeat a keyword more than five times within your keyword Meta tags.  This can result in spamming the search engine, which means they’ll likely ignore your submission.

·         To avoid spamming, formulate keyword phrases.  Instead of using “Marketing” over and over again, use phrases like “Internet marketing,” “Internet Marketing Research,” etc. 

·         Be sure to separate each keyword and keyword phrase with a comma.

How Do I Add Meta Tags to My Website?

There are two methods of adding text meta tags to your site. The first method adds the same meta tags to all your pages. The second method allows you to have individual meta tags for each page. The second method will override the first method for any page you add individual meta tags.

For the best benefit, you can add meta tags to all your pages first and then customize individual pages as needed.

To add meta tags to all your pages, click on “Tools” -> “Marketing” -> “Keywords.”  To add meta tags to individual pages, Go to your page and click on "Edit Page," then click the "Internet Marketing" tab.

Your Action

1. Choose keywords to use in your meta tags by using the Overture an/ or Google keyword selector tools.
2. Add a description and keyword meta tag to all your web pages.
3. Go to each individual web page on your website and customize the description and keyword meta tags based on the content of each page.