Meta Tags

Meta Tags

Let’s start at the beginning. A Meta Tag is information that web page designers and programmers insert into the “Head” area of your website’s HTML code like a “header” on a Microsoft word document. Unlike the Word document header, the information in the Meta Tag is invisible to website visitors. The only way people can read the Meta Tag is to look at the actual source HTML code, the program used to generate the webpages on the site. Even though it is not part of the customer interface of your site, the Meta Tag is very important because it is the clue many search engines use it to correctly categorize, and rank your website for customers (Meta Tag indexing). And of course customers, in turn, use search engines to make an ordered list of where on the Internet they will shop for goods and services. If your site has no Meta Tags, search engines (and customers) will likely pass it by. If you have the wrong Meta Tags, your search engine rankings will be so low on the search results that your customers will miss it.

You may be thinking that Meta Tag indexing is a haphazard means for search engines to categorize, and rank websites. The good news: there has been a decline in Meta Tag indexing by most major search engines in favor of more reliable search algorithms. Meta tags, however, are by no means obsolete. They are still very much a useful tool, if supplemented by appropriate web page content and web page title tags. But small businesses easily achieve better search engine rankings on their own, if they successfully implement a few simple characteristics into their website’s design. Even if you are unfamiliar with computer programming and HTML code, structuring effective Meta Tags is straightforward, if you follow the framework of the example below.

SEO 101