How Important are Meta Tags?

So you may have heard of Meta Tags and may be aware that your website needs them, but what are they and how important are they?

Well Meta Tags are a small section of HTML code that sits behind any website page and gives search engines vital information about what that web page is about as well as information on whether to crawl and index it or not.

Meta tags should always be placed in the area of an HTML document. This starts just after the tag, and ends immediately before the tag. Meta Tags can comprise of many different types that tell search engines about that specific web page on your site.

Several of the most used Meta Tags that you may have heard of are as follows:

meta name="TITLE" content="your web page title goes here"
This Title Meta Tag represents a brief overview of the page, it should contain key words relevant to the page as well as the content within it. The Title Meta Tag can be seen in your internet browser bar at the top as well as any shortcuts on your computer, favorites in your browser or bookmarks. This Meta Tag should be no longer than 55 - 60 characters.

meta name="DESCRIPTION" content="your web page description goes here"
This Description Meta Tag should explain what your web page is all about, it should also contain similar key words used in your Title Meta Tag and the content of the web page. This will be shown as the description in search engine results pages. This Meta Tag should be no more than 150 characters.

meta name="KEYWORDS" content="key, words, go, here"
The Keyword Meta Tags should be 5-10 words a maximum of 175 characters. It is key that you ensure you add between 2 - 3 keywords you used in the title tag and place them early on in the list of key words. Larger Search Engines such as Google and Yahoo tend to ignore keyword tag now days, although smaller search engines do still use it.

meta name="ROBOTS" content="index, follow"
The Robots Meta Tags tells the Search Engines whether to index that page or not and whether to follow the links within the page.

meta name="AUTHOR" content="author's name"
This is not an important tag, but lets the author add his or her name to the page if required.

Some of the less well known or used Meta Tags are:

Copyright Meta Tag - The Copyright Meta Tag is used to indicate that your information is copy righted.
Email Meta Tag - The email us used to display the relevant contact address.
Language Meta Tag - The Language Meta Tag is utilized by regional search engines.
Distribution Meta Tag - The Distribution Meta Tag is used to tell search engines whether the page is global or locally oriented.
Rating Meta Tag - The Rating Meta Tag is used to set an audience content rating.
Revisit Meta Tag - The Revisit Meta Tag is used to tell search engines when to come back next.
Expires Meta Tag - The Expires Meta Tag is used to tell search engines when the page and content is no longer valid.

So now you are aware of what Meta Tags are, where they can be found and what Search Engines use them for, how important are they?

Well when the internet started out Meta Tags were one of the main methods used to optimise a page within a website, quite quickly however the tags began to be abused, especially the key words tag.. This has had a negative impact on how Search Engines view Met Tags and where on the scale of importance they now sit.

If you were to write a list of the 200 (ish) ways in which the Google algorithm ranks a website page, meta tags would be pretty low in that list.

Having said this they are still important and used in conjunction with some good content on your website as well as other tried and tested search engine methods, they can be a useful tool to the site.

The Title and Description tags are also important to allow users who search for you to view relevant and useful data from your site in the search engine results pages, which in turn will can be the edge to get people to your site.

So how important are Website Meta Tags? Well they are not as important as they used to be, but used in conjunction with good website content and if constructed correctly can still be an asset to any website.

Some useful Meta Tag links:

Meta Tag Analyser
Definition and Usage of Meta Tags
Meta Tag Generator
Spy on your Competitors Key words


Article Written by David Taplin

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