The Title Meta Tag describes the pages content. It works something similar to how the title of a Book works. Primarily due to the fact that a webpage is essentially like any literary page, even some of the formatting crosses over. Header tags, font stylings, and more are just some of the crossovers.

The description Meta tag gives you an idea of what may be found inside the content of the page. It should be descriptive, to the point, and should have been thoroughly thought out to maximize your search engine ranking and how someone viewing the description via a search engine might be induced to click through to your site.

The HTML used: Start: <title>

End: </title>

Example: <title>Search Engine Optimization</title>

A couple of tips with the Title Tag:

- Keep it short and to the point.
66 characters is the MAXIMUM that Google will show in their search engine results. This should be used as your guide. Though you can use up to 90 total, I always recommend trying to stay within the 66.

- Do Not Repeat Your Keywords

Repeating keywords is seen as spammy and is never good for your end users anyway. Build for them and honestly Google tends to follow.

Bad Title Tag

<title>SEO – Search Engine Optimization– California Search Engine Optimization– Arizona Search Engine Optimization – Florida Search Engine Optimization – Colorado Search Engine Optimization</title>

Better Title Tag
<title>Search Engine Optimization - SEO services</title>

You may think that the kind of Title tag that is highlighted in the “bad Title Tag” doesn’t exist, “No one would ever do that” but trust me there are plenty of title tag spammers out there still today. The title tag in my opinion is one of, if not THE, most important Meta Tag to your search engine optimization campaign. Choosing the right title will not only enable more click throughs once you’ve reached the top of the search engine results, but can also help you to obtain that ranking in the first place.

All in All your Title tag should meet the above criteria while accurately displaying the title of your pages content.

The description tag allows you to describe the content that may be found on a specific page of your website. Like the title tag it is imperative that the description tag is different for EVERY page of your site as every page of your site should have different content and be discussing a different aspect, product, or service that you provide.

The Description tag is often the most “spammed” Meta Tag due to the weight this tag carries with the major search engines such as Yahoo and Google. While the description tag could contain, and probably should, in most cases A keyword or two (as they are relevant to the page) they must be written first and foremost to drive click throughs to your site.

See the description tag, outside of the title tag, is what search engine users see when deciding to click through to a website. Search engine users are savvier than ever when it comes to viewing spam and can see right through an all keyword laced description. If using an all keyword description and you do happen to obtain top search engine ranking you will be missing out on the precious clicks you are optimizing your site for in the first place.

You also have to remember that keyword spamming is frowned upon by all of the major search engines and as such even if you obtain top ranking it will be temporary and will most likely never be able to be achieved with that particular website.

The HTML Used: Start: <meta name=”Description” content=”

End: ” />

Example: <meta name=”Description” content=”Brand The Web is a premier search engine optimization company, Specializing in the fields of Search engine optimization, online internet marketing and optimized custom website design.” />

A Good Example of a Description Meta Tag:

We will use a page on a website about blue and green widgets for our example:

“Provides details on buying green and blue widgets in all available sizes including green widgets in extra large and bright blue widgets in children’s sizes.”

In this instance we used both of our target keywords as well, for example, we did a secondary target on the specific sizes that shoppers are specifically looking for when buying online. Now this would only of course work if those things were actually present on the site itself, but it gives you a good example of an optimized description that isn’t keyword spammer.

Some may try to lump the following description into the same category:

“provides blue widgets, green widgets, bright blue widgets, large green widgets, small blue widgets, all online.”

This clearly is not the same and is a good example of a “spam-like” description tag.

Description Tag Tips

- Keep it to the Google Maximum of Less.
Google shows the maximum of 153 characters. This means in those 153 characters you have the duty of capturing your potential visitors through text that is going to grab their attention. I typically like to max my descriptions to a maximum of 180 characters (yes that includes spaces). Use Word (or equivalent) to determine the exact amount of characters you are using in your description.

- Keep the Descriptions, descriptive.
Seems easy enough, but this is critical for both search engine positioning as well as total click throughs.

This is a multi part series on proper SEO usage of Meta Data. First to those who may not be familiar with meta tags and their definition we will give a quick overview. Wikipedia describes meta tags as “data about data”. Essentially meta tags such as the “description” and “keyword” tags are used to describe the information that may be found within the content of the specific page on your website.

For example the description tag gives an overview of the information provided on the page. The description for this page will most likely read similar to:

Provides details on correct use of meta tags to avoid search engine spam and over optimization of the description and keyword meta data.

Essentially giving the “cliff notes” if you will of the pages content.

How Meta Data Can Be Used As Spam

Years ago keyword density (the percentage of the number of times a keyword is found on a page) was one of the recognized ways to obtain top search engine ranking. Also known as “Keyword Spam” webmasters and SEO’s would pack as many keywords as they could into a site in order to achieve top search engine position.

In fact just recently we had a client where an SEO company (even to this day) had keyword spammed the clients site with over 80 distinct key phrases (not just words) packed into the description, title, and keyword tags. They each duplicated each other. Needless to say this is completely against Google’s Terms of Service and is just asking for a penalty or complete removal from their Index.

Correctly learning what is and isn’t acceptable is good for those who are using an SEO company so that they can keep that company in check with their practices as well for those who are optimizing their sites themselves in order to keep themselves in check. It helps to avoid the pitfalls that you may see others doing. We believe in building for long term search engine viability. What we recommend will be to achieve those goals specifically.

Proper Use Of Meta Data For Search Engine Optimization
There are only a couple of Meta Tags, when talking about SEO, in which we will look at specifically in this series. They are the Title Tags, Description Tags, and Keyword Tags. Keyword tags, as evidence is showing over and over, is a Meta tag that is being ignored more and more by search engines such as Google. So while it can still be incorporated into your site, how you use it is critical.

Correct Title Tag Usage

Correct Description Tag Usage

Correct Keyword Tag Usage

Evidence suggests that the keyword tag is often rarely used if not ignored all together. Because of this reason if you are implementing this tag you should follow some easy criteria to stay search engine friendly.

The HTML Used:

Start: <meta name=”Keywords” content=”

End: ” />

Example: <meta name="Keywords" content="search, engine, optimization, company,
online, internet, marketing, specialists, optimized, web, site, design, irvine, huntington,
beach, newport, affordable, top, ranked, california" />

Keyword Tag Tips

- Keep It Simple and To The Point.
Each page of your site should be targeting a specific set of keywords. Realistically building for one specific keyword and the long tail versions that follow that one keyword is the best way to build your SEO plan. If you are following this format than it makes choosing the keywords for this tag easy.

Lets use our widgets site from our “Description Tag” Post as an example:

Good Keyword Tag:
widgets, blue, green, widget, small, large, extra, xl, clothing, medium

As you can see we are still targeting the blue and green widgets along with the different sizes offered on that page. Realistically for proper SEO I would recommend creating pages specific to sizes to better show off the product to potential buyers as well as allowing more minute optimization.

Using distinct product pages (this time small green widgets) The tag changes to:
Widgets, small, green, widget, clothing

And yes that’s it. Remember you’re targeting a specific page and specific product line. It’s important that you do not over optimize your meta tags. This is especially true for tags that historically have been abused for keyword density problems like the keyword and description tag.