One of the more important parts of On Page SEO is the Meta tag. Meta tags are descriptors that give search engines information about your page’s content and are found in the head section of the web code. Meta tags will refer to a variety of items in many different areas, but in SEO all they have a particular set of criteria to follow. In this article we’ll go over Meta tags and what they mean for On Page SEO.
Meta tags serve as a quick reference for search engine users, giving them the information they need to find the pages on your site. They are also used by search engine bots, which analyze the sites on the Internet and determine how valuable your page is. The more relevant keywords and keyword phrases you have for optimization, the better the click-through rate (CTR). A good Meta tag can be worth its weight in gold if your CTR is high, especially since some SEO strategies like link building will pay off more if they have a high CTR.
The meta description is a small bit of SEO magic. It’s what makes your page look like it was designed for human eyes, rather than a search engine spider. The content within the Meta Description should be geared towards enticing search engine users to click on the link and read the page. You want the Meta Description to make your page look like it was built for human consumption, not just search engine optimization.
The meta description is best placed in the header tags of every HTML page. In fact, this is the ideal place for it, since your header is the first thing people see when they visit your site. The meta description and title meta description tags are the only sections of your page content that search spiders look at, so placing them here will improve your page ranking and help with optimization.
You’ll often see the keyword density Meta Description. This tells the search engine what the text will be about. When optimization isn’t done properly, this can mean that search results are returned with too many times the same keyword in the text. It also means that you may lose points because the search engine can’t distinguish between your website’s meta descriptions and the actual text. It’s best to avoid using too many keywords, but don’t write a Meta Description without considering the effect it will have on search results.
The snippet tag is used as a way to give the search engine an idea of the full content of a page. Your webmaster or SEO specialist should include snippets throughout the site, not just in the Meta Description, but also in the Title, Hints and Search Engines Lists. This ensures that the search query will come across the entire page, not just the parts of the webpage that are searched for most often.
The compact kind of Meta Description is perfect for putting in the beginning of the document or within a snippet or two of content. It’s important to note that search engines aren’t permitted to define a concise Meta Description. In order for this Meta Description to be valid, it has to be complete, precise and conveys the message exactly. If you are unsure of how to put a Meta Description in an article, you can read about the basics of writing a concise Meta Description.
There are a number of other On Page SEO techniques that can be used to help increase the ranking. However, one way to boost your ranking right from the beginning is to ensure that you use a good meta description. Once you learn the basic techniques to write a good Meta Description, learning how to use a good green bullet will only take a few more minutes of research. This will then let you get to work and start earning some good SERP’s.