SEO (12) Title tag and Meta tag

Title tag

The title tag is a very important component used by search engine relevancy algorithms to determine ranking. The title tag is also used by search engines in the search result listing. The title tag should incorporate a high frequency key term. At the same time the title should convey the overall information available on the web page, so that the user is enticed to click it. It is advisable to have different titles on different web pages of the same website. The title of a web page should reflect the overall content on the web page.

Meta tags

Meta tags are used to provide information about relevant keywords and the purpose of the web page. Meta keywords tag was used as determinant in the relevancy of a web page by early search engines. Currently very few search engines consider the meta keyword tag in their relevancy algorithms. With reference to Figure 9, one can see that the description provided in search results is the information in the DESCRIPTION meta tag. This information should be precise to entice a search engine user to click on the link.

A few Meta tags that should be paid close attention while optimizing web pages are:

1. <meta name="robots" content="..." />

Robots meta tag specifies instructions to a search engine spider whether the owner of the website would allow/disallow the spider from indexing other web pages that are linked from this page

2. <meta name="keywords" content="..." />

Keywords meta tag is used to indicate keywords relevant to the web page

3. <meta name="description" content="..." />

Description meta tag provides information regarding the intended purpose of the web page

It is worthwhile to spend extra time to have content related keywords and description on every page rather than specifying identical keywords and description for the entire website.

source:SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION AND MARKETING by Binoy Varghese page 26-27

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