There are far too many rumours and myths surrounding search engine optimisation (SEO). It’s time to set the record straight about 2 misunderstood HTML tags, and how best to use them. The 2 tags in question are…
- The title tag
- The meta description tag
The Title Tag
The HTML title tag contains text that appears in the upper-left-hand corner of your browser. There are 2 nasty ways its misuse can bite you on the bum…
- Misunderstanding its importance in SEO
- Misunderstanding how to use it
The text in the HTML title tag isn’t usually seen by people visiting your site. After all, it’s tucked right up there in the corner. Who’s going to see it? For this reason, it’s easy to overlook its importance.
Google and other search engines use this tag to help work out what your site is about. For that reason, this tag should include your main (i.e. most important) keyword. And therein lies the trap that leads people to make a major SEO mistake.
A budding SEO newbie learns about the importance of the title tag, and immediately crams as many keywords into the title tag as is humanly possible. Search engines use the text in this tag as your site’s headline in their results pages.
In other words, people who find you in a search engine decide whether or not to visit your site based on the text in the HTML title tag.
This is why it’s crucial that the text in your title tag gives people a compelling reason to click through to your site. You need to think of your HTML title tag as an ad headline, and find a way to insert your main keyword phrase.
The Meta Description Tag
Some people think search engines don’t look at this tag. And they make the mistake of ignoring it, because they think it’s not important. The thing is, the text in this tag is used by Google, Bing and others as the descriptive information in their results pages.
Once again, people are deciding whether or not to visit your site based on this text. So it has to be compelling.
If the text in the meta description isn’t compelling, it will suppress the number of visitors you get from search engines. It’s absolutely essential that your meta description explain to people why they should visit your site.
Search Engine Marketing
The title and meta description tags are an important part of the SEO process, and can’t be overlooked. But they’re also useful search engine marketing tools.
It’s worth taking your time to develop powerful and compelling titles and descriptive text. Each page on your site should have it’s own title and description. And these should persuade people to visit your site.
