Understanding How Meta Tags and Title Tags Impact SEO

Meta tags contain information on a website. For the (search engine optimization) SEO industry, meta tags and title tags are critical to assist with placement in search engines. Think of these tags as a way to help influence how you define the theme of an individual web page.

Understanding Search Engine Results

When you go to a site like Google and search for a phrase, the site returns ten (10) results and each result entry has 3 sections:

1. Page title (title tag)

2. Description (meta description or snippet of text)

3. Destination URL (webpage address)

Let's review how meta tags and title can influence search engine results. Title tags are technically a different tag, but for purposes of illustration, we will group them under meta tags

What are meta tags?

More commonly, there are three types of meta tags that a SEO expert will focus on:

1. title tags

2. meta description

3. meta keywords

Tip: To review meta tags for a page type "Ctrl + u" when the Internet browser window is open (Firefox only).

Title Tags:

Title tags are the words seen in the top left of your browser. For example, go to CNN.com and look in the upper left. You'll see the "CNN.com. - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment and Video News" text This text is the title tag and help to identify search engines that your page is about. Is there a character limit on how much text a search engine to read. As a best practice be specific, but descriptive and try to keep the title tag under 100 characters or 10-12 words.

Meta Description Tag:

The meta description is a text declaration that gives a summary of what the page is about. Search engines can only read 255 characters, so most descriptions are limited to 1-2 sentences. What is significant about the meta description tag is the potential possibility to influence how the page appears in a search engine. The 1-2 lines of text below the title of a page in a search engine can be influenced by the meta description tag.

Tip: PDF does not have meta descriptions. To influence the text in a search engine result, focus on the first visible text available. The first text phrase on the PDF will act as a substitute for a meta description tag.

Meta Keyword Tags:

What keywords are important within the content of your page? The keyword meta tag is a chance to highlight and reinforce important of keyword phrases. Meta keyword tags should be less than 500 characters.

The role of research Keyword:

An SEO professional conducts keyword research to obtain a quantity of keywords that are popular among users of search engines. This information is useful to incorporate these keyword phrases in the content of the web page. The site content and keyword research play a role in guiding the SEO professional towards what information should be included in the meta-tag on a given page.

Creating Meta Tags Onsite or outsourced?

Depending on the industry, time constraints and budget will influence the decision to perform keyword research and create meta tags in-house or rely on a professional agency search engine optimization. As a benchmark, currently ranks among the top 30 results (pages 1-3) in a search for a keyword phrase you think a customer type? The more competitive the industry, the main benefit is a SEO consulting company.

Many agencies search engine optimization should conduct in-depth keyword research, followed by implementation of keyword phrases into existing content. Edit the content of the web page by entering keywords popular phrases will help improve the ability of the page to rank for a particular keyword phrase. The process is completed with the creation of meta tags and title tags as a compliment to the content of the page. The result will be a circular process that leverages descriptive on page content to help identify to search engines what your site is about .......