Hi all! Back from my holiday in Ibiza which was amazing and a good chance to take a break from Search Engine Optimisation.
Tip number nine is all about the meta data in your websites code but first a brief explanation of meta data - what it is and how it helps you communicate with the search engines. If you don't understand any of the jargon below then just double click on the word and a box will appear explaining it to you.
What is Meta data?
Web pages are written in a language called HTML which your web browser is able to read. Your web browser then reads the HTML in order to render a web page that normal humans can read! The meta data is the part of the HTML code that is not displayed to human readers but which the search engines read in order to gain information about your site. As the meta data is written by the web developer it is essentially our way of communicating directly with the search engines.
Meta data can be used to tell search engines all sorts of things including what you wouyld like your site described as when it appears in the search results page, what keywords you would like your site to be found for, how often your content is refreshed and all other types of information.
Because meta data is fairly easy to manipulate, it has fallen down in importance as a way of optimising your site i.e. because people were using it as a way to unfairly manipulate search engine results, the search engines dropped its importance. Meta data remains however an important clue that the search engines look at when assessing the overall theme of your website and which keywords are relevant to it.
Too many sites leave out meta data altogether which is great news for us and for you too as it means that we can already get an advantage over these people when we try to get ranked higher than them in the search engine results.
Top 5 Meta data optimisation Tips
1. Research your keywords thoroughly before you place them into your meta data and try to keep each page closely themed i.e. If your pages keyword is "trainers" then use that word in the page title, description and keyword meta tags.
2. Remember that search engines rank individual pages and not entire websites therefore, make each individual pages meta data about a slightly different topic / product i.e. Don't use the same meta data for each page, personalise it according to the page that you're on.
3. Make your page description meta tags a "call to action" as you would write an advert. They are often the descriptions that people see on the results page of search engines so try to place your unique selling propositions in there to get more people to click on your site.
4. When writing the meta keywords use commas to seperate them with no space inbetween or the search engines will only be able to read the first word i.e. meta name="keywords" content="free web hosting, cheap web hosting, free web tool, webmaster tool, web tool, free website"
5. Remember that the meta tags are there for you to honestly convey to the search engines what your site is all about. Any attempt to trick or spam the search engines using these tags have already been tried years ago and the search engines will only punish you for attempting to spam them! Keep it clean!!
Labels: client seo advice, meta data optimisation, seo tips
