What Are Meta Tags?

In the top of your web pages in between the two <head> </head>  tags are the meta tags. They are the areas of the webpage designed for a search engine crawler to gather information about the topic of each page. People do not see meta tags (unless you reveal the source code), only bots do. These SEO elements are often talked about in different SEO camps. One extreme right camp says, “nah, they don’t even matter anymore”. The other  extreme left camp says, “they are the secret, the end all, the one # 1 ranking factor, the magic bullet”. Somewhere in the middle lies the truth!

Viewing Meta Tags in Your Firefox Browser

If we look at the GALearning.com website as an example I’ll show you  how to reveal meta tags in any web page.

In Firefox, right mouse click on the screen and “View Page Source”

Once you click the view page source link a new window will appear revealing the source code of the webpage you are reviewing.

Above I have circled (in red) what I believe to be the three most important parts of the webpage for search engine indexing. In the large majority of cases search engines will index your website according to the information that appears in the page title or meta tag description. This is not always the case but in most of the observations I have made, when a website has these elements present they usually play a role in what displays to the public in the search engine index. Did you get all that? That means that these particular areas of each webpage are worth spending extra time handcrafting to convey a certain message that meshes with your business marketing campaigns, SEO, PPC and business model.

Proof Meta Tags Matter for Click Through & Conversion

Here’s a quick test I will do so you clearly understand what I am communicating to you.

1) Let’s visit Google and enter part of the exact search phrase that appears in the title of GALearning.com’s home page. “website redesign steps for 2010”. The result is a number one ranking (at the time of this experiment).

2) Take a closer look at exactly what Google is displaying for the world to see when this phrase is entered. This phrase to describe search engine indexes appearing to viewers  is also known as SERPS (search engine result pages).

3) Compare the displayed results from Google SERPS to the meta tags that are appearing on  GALearning.com’s home page. Look at the yellow highlighted areas and compare them to the Google search engine result that displays to the public. They are an exact match! That’s where Google got the information that will display to millions (hopefully) of searchers.

Light Bulb Moment?

Now are you beginning to see the importance in creating meta tag data that makes a lot of sense. Spend some extra time trying to get in the mindset of the people that are entering phrases into search engines. This is where I like to begin crafting the verbiage for my page titles and meta tag descriptions. To me, those are the two most important areas. I don’t wanna say meta tag keywords are important but they are a part of good web site development manners. When a web page is finally published to the Internet it is a large number of SEO factors combined that will spell out the contextual meaning to a search engine. Tests have already been done that conclude search engines such as Google have the technology to understand the context of a phrase.

The take away from this article is the information appearing in the top of each webpage (meta tags) connects directly to each visitor through search engine result pages. Make them nice, make them inviting, make them engaging … speak right to your audience!

Check out this Free Meta Tag Tool to Help You Make Meta Tags

Generate your own Meta tags http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/meta-tag-generator/

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