meta tag myths: what will they really do for your web site?

'Meta tags' are part of the behind-the-scenes code that makes up each of your web pages.

In the past, meta tags played a major role in defining a page's position in search results. This was because most search engines looked for search terms within the tags as well as on the visible page. Consequently a lot of web site owners became very excited about the possibility of boosting their page ranking without having to change the visible page.

This all changed when search engine providers realised that it is just too easy for unscrupulous authors to abuse meta tags by packing them with irrelevant words in an attempt to boost their rankings. So now page ranking takes more account of the visible page content and external factors such as how many other sites link in to the page - factors which are more difficult to manipulate.

However, meta tags have other uses. For example, if a page doesn't contain much text then some search engines will display descriptions taken from the meta tags in their results (useful to know if your pages are built with Flash, for example).

So just how important are meta tags?

They may make a slight difference to your page rank in some search engines. However, search engines will generally take more notice of your visible page content, page titles and link popularity, so make these your highest priorities.

Meta tag 'descriptions' are worth including because they may show up in the search engine results and give you an opportunity to tempt searchers to click the link to your page.

On the other hand, if you abuse meta tags (even unintentionally) then it is possible that some search engines may penalise your pages by moving them down in their listings.

What exactly are these meta tags?

In simple terms, meta tags are specific codes that include snippets of real text such as a paragraph or a list. Each page in a web site can have meta tags containing text that is unique to that page. There are lots of variations but the two most useful types of meta tags are the 'Description' and 'Keywords'.

Description contains a sentence of up to 150 characters that describes the page content.

For example: The Twice as Loud theatre company present news of their performances at fringe theatre venues in London and monthly new play reading evenings.

Keywords contains a list of, ideally, around 25 words selected from the visible text.

How to create meta tags for your web site

• Create the text with a word processor which gives you a word or character count facility. Your web designer can then copy and paste the text into the code.
• Write a separate description for each page in your site (if your pages are dynamically created then you may be able to automatically use the main heading or the first paragraph - talk to your web developer).
• Remember that the aim of the description is to provide an accurate summary of the page content.
• Since the description may show up in search engine listings make sure that you write readable text that will appeal to your target audience (write for people before search engines).
• Select words and phrases from the page's body text that visitors might be searching for (see my article on keywords).
• You don't have to include misspellings - most search engines tend to allow for them these days, although it may be worth putting synonyms, particularly for technical terms into the keywords.
• When you write your keywords arrange the words to make up likely search phrases, repeating the same words no more than two or three times.

Meta tag tips

• Include your top search terms as near the beginning of each tag as possible.
• Avoid repeating the same words more than two or three times - some search engines consider this cheating (or 'spamming') and may penalise your page by moving it down in the search results.
• Keep the description factual and avoid sales terms like 'the best'.
• Only write 'keywords' for pages that are most likely to appear in search engine results - it's just not worth the effort of writing them for every single page.
• Don't rely on meta tag keywords alone - make sure that the words appear in the visible text as well. If likely search terms are missing from the page then the body text needs editing. You can't compensate by putting the words into the meta tags alone - the search engines will just ignore them.
• It's important that you include well written description tags if your main pages have little visible text on them for example, if they contain mainly large graphics or multimedia content.

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last updated: 17/08/05