What are meta-tags? Meta tags are special HTML codes, called tags, that exist within the HTML language that’s used to create most websites. Meta tags provide important information to search engines. They tell a search engine, “Hey, take notice of this – this is important!” They provide shortcuts to specific details about a web page or website that help the search engines understand what a site is about and send website searches to it accordingly.
Important Meta Tags to Know
You don’t necessarily need to know how to write HTML code to create meta tags. When Web Design of Palm Beach creates your website, they will make sure that the important meta tags are completed in your site design to help you with your website traffic. But during the design and development process, you may be asked to provide certain pieces of key information to help us build a great website.
There are two important meta tags to know:
- Meta Description: The meta description tag provides a brief description of what a web page is about. When someone searches for your site online, it provides the information for search engine results that describes the page. If it’s written well, users may be more inclined to click on the link.
- Meta Title or Title Tag: Although it’s not technically a meta tag, the title tag combines with the meta description field on a page to share the page’s title with website visitors and searchers.
There’s another field that’s still used by Yahoo! but abandoned by most of the other search engines called the meta keywords field. This field is usually populated with a string of keyword phrases separate by commas. Yahoo! still uses this field, but the other major search engines claim they no longer do. It’s a good idea just to include them to be on the safe side.
Basics of Meta Description Tags
There are several best practices for writing meta descriptions or page descriptions that are good to know.
- Write your meta description sentences like advertising copy. It should be specific to the page but juicy enough to entice someone to click the link.
- Avoid duplicating tags on your website. The same tag on every page won’t help, and may hurt, your pages and click throughs.
- Don’t use quotation marks – these cut off your sentence when the search engine displays them!
- Keep them between 150 and 160 characters. Anything longer gets cut off.
If you need help building your website, call us. Web Design of Palm Beach offers affordable, reliable website hosting, website design, search engine optimization consulting and much, much more. Call us at 561.262.5886 to learn more or speak with a web design expert today.