The Title Tag & Meta Tags: Worth Their Weight In Gold

The “Big Three” are what some SEO consultants call them. There is a unique “Title”tag, and two Meta tags which are the “Description” and “Keyword” tag. These three tags are part of each individual web page on a website. The Title and Meta tags are definitely important factors in achieving high search engine rankings. Are you aware of this? If not, you ought to be and in this article I’ll explain the reasons why.

OK … so what are these tags and what do you do with them?

Briefly, these three tags are snippets of HTML code that belong inside the HEAD section of each web page. Two of the three tags hold information that is very important for search engine result queries. All three tags are very important “food” for the little search engine spiders. Simply stated, the Title, Description and Keyword tags help the spiders learn what your web page is all about.

Let me explain each one so you’ll understand the role they play in search engine optimization strategy.

#1: The Very Important, Don’t Ignore It “Title Tag”

The Title tag serves a very important SEO purpose. Every web page on your website NEEDS to have this tag keyword optimized and well written with eye-grabbing information. It’s important SEO role is to entice people to click on it when they’re viewing the SERP’s (search engine result pages).

The Title tag is also very important in helping you achieve high rankings. To learn more about the Title tag, please read this article: Using the Title Tag — Search Engine Ranking Significance

#2: Also Very Valuable For Your Rankings: The Description Meta Tag

The Description Meta tag also plays a very important role. It’s right up there with the Title tag. It should be optimized in the same fashion as the Title tag so I won’t repeat that here. And it also is potential eye candy in that it may help to grab a potential visitor’s attention when they are scanning over the search engine results page.

Between a well written and concise Title tag, and an informative Description Meta tag that gives a good overview of what that web page is all about, you may just get the click from the web surfer who has been searching for the information your web page contains.

There are a few small differences in how the search engines utilize it, and you do need to become aware. To learn more about the Description Meta tag, please read this article:  Understand The Description Meta Tag — How The SE’s Do And Don’t Rely Upon It.

#3: The Keyword Meta Tag

Ah, the used and abused poor Keyword tag. Unethical spammers misused this tag way back when the search engines weren’t as savvy as they are now. Spammers stuffed every conceivable keyword they could think of into it. And many websites were able to rank highly for these “stuffed” keywords, even though there may NOT have been one little bit of content on the web page pertaining to the keywords.

So, Google and all the others quickly became aware of this problem and sure enough the algorithms for page ranking changed. Today this tag is really not worth its weight in search engine gold. As a matter of fact, many people totally ignore it. But nevertheless I don’t, and I do make use of it, not only on my own websites, but also on my client’s websites.

To learn more about the Keyword Meta tag, please read this article:  The Keyword Meta Tag – Should You Even Bother With It?