12 Jun 09 SEO SIMPLIFIED: Writing Meta Tags

Written by: bikram

Instead of discussing about any new concept, in the last two articles, we focused our attention on some of the mistakes, which if not avoided will nullify all the hard work done in terms of search engine optimization. In this article, I will share some meta tags writing tips that will prove effective in getting a better ranking in the search engine result pages (SERPs).

As we discussed earlier, meta tags plays a very critical role in SEO, and the two meta tags that are very important are meta description tags and meta keyword tags. We will be focusing our attention on these two meta tags in this article.

Writing meta description tag

Meta description tag appears below the page title of each of the search result, and it has a significant impact on the click through rate of the displayed link. When writing meta description tags, please keep the following points in mind.

• A meta description should be less than 160 characters.
• It should be legible for the human reader.
• No two pages should have the same meta description tag.
• Texts in meta description tag should reinforce the keyword used in title tag or the main keyword of the web page. Try synonyms, plurals, or other versions of the same keyword. Try different combinations as well.
• Use modifiers with the other variants of keywords to reinforce the theme of the web page.
• A good meta description tag can differentiate your site from other sites on the same page.

Meta Keyword Tags

Due to its nature of being susceptible to spamming, and keyword stuffing, this meta tag has lost its former glory, yet it will not hurt to optimize your page with putting the right keywords in here.

• This meta tag is used primarily for the web crawlers. Your reader has nothing to do with it.
• Number of keywords should not be more than three.

Tags: Combinations, Critical Role, Former Glory, Meta Description Tag, Meta Description Tags, Meta Keyword, Meta Tag, Meta Tags, Modifiers, Plurals, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Result, Search Result, Significant Impact, Synonyms, Tag Texts, Title Tag, Variants, Web Crawlers, Writing Tips