The
Meta tags are a very important part
of the HTML code of your web page. They are read by the search engines but are
not displayed as a part of your web page design. Usually they include a concise
summary of the web page content and you should include your relevant keywords
in them. Most Meta tags are included within the 'header' code of a website. The
most important tags are the title, description, keywords and robot tags.
Title
tag:
It
could be said that the title is one of the most important factors for a successful
search engine optimization of website. Located within the <head> section,
right above the Description and Keywords tag, it provides summarized
information about the website. Besides that, the title is what appears on
search engines result page (SERP). So the title should be so impressive that it
should drive the visitor to the site.
The
title tags should be between 10-60 characters. This is not a law, but a
relative guideline - a few more symbols is not a problem. You won't get
penalized for having longer title tags, but the search engine will simply
ignore the longer part. It counts only for the first 60 characters and so it
would be vain to write more than 60 characters as it is neither visible for the
user nor the search engine considers it.
In
particular the title should be composed in such a way that the keyword might as
well show up in the first 60 characters following which will be in unavailing.
Meta
Description tag:
The
description tag should be written in such way that it will show what information
your website contains or what your website is about. Write short and clear
sentences that will not confuse your visitors.
The
description tag should be less than 200 characters. The Meta description tag
also has a great importance for the SEO optimization of your page. It is most
important for the prospect visitor when looking at the search engine result
page - this tag is often displayed there and helps you to distinguish your site
from the others in the list.
The
Meta description should contain the keyword that is to be optimized and is the
same one used in Meta title part
Meta
Keywords tag:
Lately,
the Meta keyword tag has become the least important tag for the search engines
and especially Google. However, it is an easy way to reinforce once again your
most important keywords. We recommend its usage as we believe that it may help
the SEO process, especially if you follow the rules mentioned next.
The
keyword tags should contain between 4 and 10 keywords. They should be listed
with commas and should correspond to the major search phrases you are
targeting. Every word in this tag should appear somewhere in the body, or you
might get penalized for irrelevance. No single word should appear more than
twice, or it may be considered spam. The keyword that is used in Meta title and
Meta description should compulsorily be the word from this group. It would be
better to include multiple phrase words also as keywords. It would greatly
serve if we use a word which has less competition as a keyword so that after
optimization our site will appear 1st in SERP.
Meta
Robots tag:
This
tag helps you to specify the way your website will be crawled by the search
engine. There are 4 types of Meta Robots Tag:
Index,
Follow -
The search engine robots will start crawling your website from the main/index
page and then will continue to the rest of the pages.
Index,
NoFollow -
The search engine robots will start crawling your website from the main/index
page and then will NOT continue to the rest of the pages.
NoIndex,
Follow -
The search engine robots will skip the main/index page, but will crawl the rest
of the pages.
NoIndex,
NoFollow -
None of your pages will be crawled by the robot and your website will not be
indexes by the search engines.
Note: If you want to be sure that all
robots should crawl your website we advise you to add an "Index,
follow" Meta robot tag. Please note that most of the search engine
crawlers will index your page starting from the index page, continuing to the
rest of the pages, even if you do not have a robot tag. So if you wish your
page not to be crawled or to be crawled differently use the appropriate robot
tag.
How to optimize
Meta tags?
The title tag, Meta
description and keywords tags should include keywords relevant to the content
of the web page they describe. Besides that, you should consider the length and
the order of the characters/words included in each of the Meta tags. Note that
the search engine robots read from left to right and those words that come
first are more important than those that come towards the end of the page. Don't try to stuff the meta tags with too much of keywords. Have knowledge on the latest updates before implementing this task.
How to edit Meta tags?
You can edit your Meta
tags through the File Manager in the cPanel of your hosting account. You need
to edit the file of each web page. The file contains the HTML code of the page.