META TAGS IN SEO- ARE THEY IMPORTANT?
By: Deepti Jain
To put in simple words, meta-tags are pieces of code within the website that contain information about each page. These tags are supposed to tell search engines and users what the page is about.
Meta tags are used to add information to the HTTP header of a webpage. It also contains hidden information in the coding that the search engines will pick up on. Where apart from the Title Tag, other information inserted is not visible to the person surfing your web page but is intended for the search engine crawlers. Meta Tags are included so that the search engines are able to list your site in their indexes more accurately.
Meta tags can help improve your placement in search engines and can therefore help increase traffic to your Web site. Most likely, if your site does not have “keywords” in the head of your html code, the engines will not find your website.
Choosing keywords carefully:
Choosing the keywords used in your Meta tags are very important. If you don’t choose the proper keywords, submitting your site to the search engines will be useless, because those keywords are major factors in determining how a site visitor will locate your site in the engines. Let’s take a look from the searcher’s point a view…
A searcher goes to Google, Yahoo or MSN, looking for topics or products relating to what your site is offering. He comes up with 10 to 20 search results on the first page of the engine. Your site listing is no where to be found. Why? Most likely you have not inserted the most effective keywords relevant to your website.
Choose carefully the keywords you insert into Meta tags. Pretend you are searching the web for sites that have themes similar to your site. List keywords you think people might typically use. Include popular synonyms of your keywords. Also include common misspellings of the keywords. Include phrases of two or three words that might be used by persons searching for your site. These phrases are of special importance, because when people search on single words, they usually get more hits than they can examine. People then enter phrases of two, three, or more words to narrow the searches. If you place the same phrases in your Meta tags, your site will more likely come up earlier in the searches. Make nouns plural to catch both singular and plural words.
A common but unethical practice that some people practice is to create a framed page and link it to another site. The linked page will be displayed, but because the link is in a framed page, the browser will display the address of the framed page not the address of the page at the link. The result is that the displayed page appears to be published under the domain of the framed page. To avoid this happening to your site, place the “window-target” Meta tag in your pages.
Do not use words that are not relevant to your site. So think about the phrases that you would use if you were looking for subject material such as your site has to offer.
Keep your most important keywords and phrases within the first 100 characters of this statement.
Meta tags are not the “magic bullet” that will skyrocket your site to the top of all search page listings. They are a tool that will help improve your standings in search engines that use them. Use them with other marketing strategies to garner more page views.
Keep in mind that not all search services use Meta tags, and the ones that do use them may not use all of them. Thus, Meta tags may help you get more hits on your web site, but they are not a cure-all. For example, the current trend is that search services get keywords from the text in your pages instead of from Meta tags. Some services may use Meta tags, and the tags should be included in your pages.
Another thing to remember:
Most search engines look at the body of text on your pages, as well as the page title. They take this information as higher relevance than any Meta tags. So, be sure to always have a relevant “TITLE” on your pages, and relevant content in the body of the page. This will improve your rankings more than just Meta tags alone.
Several years ago the search engines devalued the use of meta-tags in determining rankings. But because they use the meta-tags as page descriptions in their SERP pages, you must make special efforts to ensure that the content presented to searchers inspires them to click on your links rather than the competitors’.
If you don’t put meta-tags on your website’s pages, then Yahoo and MSN will just guess at what to put in the description of your website. They will pull phrases out of context from your site and slap them in there. The result is not nearly as inviting as it could have been otherwise. That’s why it is always beneficial to learn to write effective meta-tags.
It will be absolutely wrong to say that Meta Tags don’t carry any importance - but it is also equally wrong to say that Meta Tags can get your web site ranked in top search results, without proper application. After all, skills are everywhere required! We can not behave like walking pumpkins!
Remember, Meta Tags are not even given 5% importance when it coming to search engine ranking - but still these tags is considered important and for better results - it is generally recommended to use appropriate Meta Tags as they give information about your site to web servers, search services, and other programs. Meta tags are different from other XHTML elements, because Meta tags give information about the pages themselves rather than about the content of the pages.
