Orlando SEO Florida Marketing Company > Meta Tags, Title Tags and META Data for SEO


META Tags, Title Tags and META Data for Search Engine Optimization

Meta Data was once the single most important solution for someone concerned with Search Engine Optimization and having a high search rank with search engines.

Early search engines viewed the Meta Tags on a website, hidden code that was behind the scenes away from the viewer. The Meta Tags would have information about the website, it's author, a description of the website and helpful keywords that someone might use to describe the website when looking for it.

All was well, for about 24 hours. Until someone realized that ranking for one theme is great, but ranking for two, three, four, five-hundred.. is much better. As people began to SPAM their Meta Data with false information the Meta tag began is rapid ascent into obscurity.

Despite being relatively weak in influence, many "SEO HOW-TO" Guides will tell you just how vitally important Meta Data such as your Meta Tags are. While that is absolutely not the case, Meta tags are very low in importance, it's my belief that a search engine may view a website as incomplete if it's meta data is empty.

So while having meta data may not help you achieve higher search engine placement, it's entirely possible that not having meta data might lead to some form of small penalty.

The Exception to the Rule: Title Tag - The argument for Meta Data

Having just thrashed meta tags as obsolete, it's important I note one exception to the rule. The Title tag is still used by many search engines and is one of the first things a search engine views when its opening your website. Thus it has some importance as a description of the website. A title tag does infact influence to some degree your websites ranking.

Consider that in 2002 Monika Henziger (the director of research at Google) was quoted "Currently we don't trust metadata" Many would believe this to indicate that they do not use Meta Data in their calculations, however consider the exact words.

"We don't trust metadata" is not the same as "we exclude metadata". Infact search engines by nature must not trust websites they index. Period.

Whether it's the Meta Data, Title Tag specifically, Page Content, or Inbound links. Any single point of this picture could be used and exploited for gain on search engines.

Infact looking through history, each of these points has... infact been exploited! Keyword stuffing and computer generated page content, link spamming, etc. However it's only when all of this information is taken into account and parsed through a search engines complex algorithm that a true level of trust and confidence in a website can be gained.

What's in a Title Tag?

Writing a good title tag is important. But what strategy should you use when writing a title for your webpage?

Storybook Title Tag: Chapter Theory:

The Chapter Theory (as I like to call it) is the idea that your website is much like a book published on the Internet. Thus the Title Tag should act as a "Chapter Introduction" describing what your page is about.

For instance using Chapter Theory, I might make the title tag for this page something like:
"Choosing the right Title Tag and Meta Data " or perhaps;
" Return of the Title and Meta Tags in SEO"

Okay, perhaps the second example is overdramatic but it gets the point across.
A Title done with chapter theory has improved readability for a human. Consider that most search engines use Title Tags as the links when they index the page, having an attractive title tag for humans can help your website increase click thrus over a title tag that is simply a jumble of keywords.

The negative is that you are wasting precious keyword space. It's a toss up, personally I prefer a different method.

Title Tags: It's the Keyword(s) Stupid

There are those among us that believe that a title tag should consist only of keywords.
The common argument here is that you should maximize the title tag to hold the maximum number of keywords related to your webpage. This argument does have some flaws in it, but let me expand in some areas to show you why I believe when it comes to title tags, it really is the keyword(s).

First, studies in pay-per-click search engine marketing have shown that advertisements with titles that containt the exact keywords as was used in the initial search have a much higher click thru ratio then titles that do not.

Further in long tail searches, the more keywords contained in the advertisment that were also used in the search, the better the click thru rate. Simple and straight forward, nothing new here.

Now let's expand here. The Internet is not a book. There I've said it. Any illusions anyone has had about the Internet being a gigantic storybook have been put to bed.

The Internet is filled with people who were taught by Local BBS's, and Content Providers such as America Online, Prodigy, Compuserve, and GENie (I know.. going way back here...) to search by using simple keyword phrases to navigate their services.

Want to pay your bill? "/go billing" or "Keyword Billing" etc.

No matter how hard these services tried they could not escape the computer achitecture of the softwares and services they operated. The Internet search engines and websites have not changed.

If I want to pay my car loan, I can try to search on google for "Pay my volkswagen loan"

The result is jibberish. It's not helpful at all, and it will bring me no closer to paying my volkswagen car loan, but perhaps more helpful in finding a scam site and paying someone elses car loan. ;)

However if I search for "Volkswagen Credit" Volkswagen comes up #1 in the rankings and I can pay my bill. When you really look at the Internet, no matter how search friendly the engines become, the most effective way to get your website on top, right now is using a keyword rich method.