Meta Tags Optimization - How to Write Meta Tags

Meta tags are a very important part of each page on your website. They let search engines like Google.com, Yahoo.com, and MSN.com know what your pages are all about. They need to be unique or your pages can be penalized by the search engines. They also need to be targeted to the appropriate keywords, or you can miss a lot of potential visitors.

You can view my search engine optimization tutorial on keywords to find out how to research the appropriate keywords for your meta tags.

There are three meta tags - Title, Keywords, and Description. On every page of a website, you will notice the Title appear in the top left corner. That's on the very top of your browser. You won't see Keywords or Description on a page. Search engines read your meta tags to index the page in the search engine results.

When you search, you will notice the title appears as a link with the description under it in the search engine results. Meta tags should be written with search engine optimization keywords and action words in mind to make people want to visit your website. Action words include "Buy", "View", "Visit", and "Find". They will encourage someone do something when they read them.

Now that you have a list of keywords you can use and you know where meta tags will appear, you are probably wondering how to write meta tags.

Meta Tag Optimization Rules to Follow

Meta Titles
1. Start with the most important / relevant keyword you want to be found for first. You can include keyword phrases. You will want keywords that are searched the most to appear first in the title. This will help you get found for that keyword. There is no point of using keywords that have low search results first since it will reduce your chance of being found in the search engines.

2. Don't repeat keywords more than twice if possible. The titles won't read well and the search engines can consider your titles as spam and not as relevant.

3. The keywords you use in your title can help improve your internal links going to other pages of your website. You should always try to link to relevant pages with related keywords in the title.

4. It's a good idea to use around 64 characters in your titles or they won't be displayed. You can write longer titles to help you target more keywords.

Meta Keywords
1. Use lower case letters and separate keywords with a comma.

2. Don't repeat too many keywords since search engines can consider it spam.

3. You can use three to five different keywords per page. If you need to use more, make a new page targeting the new keywords.

Meta Descriptions
1. Start your meta description with your highest searched keyword. Keywords will be bolded in the search results.

2. You should try to write meta descriptions that are around 144 - 154 characters since that’s how many characters the search engines will display. You can write longer descriptions to target more keywords. Do not write short meta descriptions or your website can be penalized by search engines.

3. Write phrases that are unique to the page and use action words to help attract more people to your website. They will more likely visit your website if they like what they read.

4. Include the keywords you added to your Meta Keywords.

Changes to meta tags could take about one week to show up in the search engine results. After you are finished writing meta tags, you can view my SEO content writing advice blog post to help you optimize the content on each page.