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Meta Description Magic: Optimize Your Meta Description Tag

Posted by Unknown On 2:57 AM


There is much debate about the current value of meta tags. I still find them very effective
– both as an end in themselves and also as a guide to producing better and more search
friendly content. Although Google apparently ignore their contents, MSN and Yahoo


both still utilise the site title and description meta tags in their search algorithms. MSN’s
newly launched web site still makes reference to the value of the key words meta tag.
Meta tags are so called because they sit above the site – in the “Head” section – and are
not visible to the casual site visitor. The meta tags can be found between the <Head> and
</Head> lines of HTML code, as the description suggests, at the top of the page.

Meta Tag Priorities

The Site Title Meta Tag

The site title tag is the most important meta tag. The site title meta tag is still read and
indexed by all the major engines. How do we know this? Because it appears at the top of
each organic search entry in the search engine results pages. However, some SEOs
dispute whether it is really a meta tag at all – because the information the tag contains is
clearly visible in the top left corner of the blue area surrounding the screen. The
recommendation of RFC 1866, the international standard for HTML, is that the tag
should contain no more than 64 characters, including spaces. There is nothing physically
stopping you exceeding this limit. I have seen some major sites with 150 characters in
this tag. However the typical, browser can only show 70 or so characters and secondly,
and with more characters, the impact of keywords within the tag is progressively diluted.
From my experience the keywords in the early part of the tag carry more weight. I
personally prefer a limit of 50 to 55 characters. Checking the quality of the title meta tag
is the quickest way of assessing whether a site has been optimised.
A key debate, given the character limitations, is whether you should include the
organisation’s name in the title meta tag. Much depends on the names length and whether
it includes desired keywords. My view is that with limited space, you are wasting a
valuable resource if you use your organisation name here.

The Site Description Meta Tag

The site description is the second most important meta tag. It is read by the engines
Yahoo and MSN and still plays a significant role in their searches. The site description
should tell the engine about the nature of the web site. It is recommended that this is done
in no more than 200 characters including spaces. It should be presented using good
grammar and avoiding repetition. The site description should include relevant keywords.

Keywords Meta Tag

You would have read in the previous section on search history that the keywords meta tag
is, today, ignored by most of the search engines. So, if the spiders do not take them that
seriously, why do we still have them? In my opinion the main role they perform is one of
internal guidance and discipline for the web master. If you know what keywords you are
looking for it is easy to test your content to ensure there’s a match.