
The two most critical Meta tags are the Meta title and the Meta description. Major search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Ask use these to index your site by its pages. Meta keywords used to be an important factor as well, but search engines no longer use keywords as a ranking factor. Competitors are able to look at which keywords you are focusing on. For optimal results it’s best to focus on a specific keyword or a variation of that is mentioned in the title and description.
Research from Metatags.org show that just 20% of websites use these Meta tags as part of the HTML. By right clicking on a website and selecting View Page Source you are able to see their Meta tags. Studies show more than 85% of sites either have no tags or improper tags that are not able to be used by search engines.
Search engines display the title and description of all the site’s pages. All titles should be under 100 characters and descriptions should be less than 200. A proper title and description are able to influence not only the search engine, but the person using it as well. The first thing visible to your customer on the search engine results page (SERPs) are the tags. It is important to make them like a mini advertisement for your business since these can make or break the website. At least when it comes to indexing it by the search engine, if yours are not appealing a competitor’s site could be clicked on instead.
Some places may charge for their service in assisting you with Meta tags, but there are many resources out there to aid you. Metatags.org has plenty of valuable information on creating correct Meta tags and learning all you need to know regarding them.