Friday, November 17, 2006

Revenge of the meta-tag!

 

Posted by I Brian

Many people in SEO groan at the thought of meta-tags.

After all meta-tags for ranking is dead for SEO isn’t it?

Not quite.

In fact meta-tags have begun a startling revival.

A couple of key points about why you should consider taking meta-tags more seriously:


1. Google duplicate content filters


Google has had real problems this year in determining what may or may not be duplicate content.

Sites with generic or absence of meta-description tags may find themselves going supplemental or simply not showing properly for their content.

Heck even well-known sites such as SEOmoz and Threadwatch may have issues here.

Going supplemental is an invitation to traffic loss so take pre-emptive action by setting up unique meta-description tags on your pages.


2. Clickthrough rates

There’s no point ranking for good keywords if the description under your search engine listing sucks.

Absense of a meta-description at best leaves search engines looking for a random sampling of text that may be relevant.

Why leave it to chance?

Increase your clickthrough rates from listings by actually better controlling the text with the listing by setting up unique meta-descriptions tags for your pages.

And try to ensure you include a marketing hook very quickly in the description tag.

If you are ranking tell search engine users why your page is so relevant for their query.


3. Ranking

Google doesn’t appear to use meta-keywords to rank webpages/sites.

But Yahoo! does.

Yahoo! still commands a respectable 30% of US search traffic and even where the market share is really small (such as the UK) strong Yahoo! rankings can still prove very cost-effective.

So add some spice for Yahoo! Search by focusing on your meta-keywords tag.

No I’m not advising you keyword stuff the tag – but at least make the effort to set up keywords in your tag that Yahoo! can process that for ranking purposes.


Overall

All too often people can get fixated on the details rather than the bigger picture. Decent meta-tags are a part of that bigger picture.

This is especially when it comes to clickthrough rates. After all what’s the point of ranking for competitive keywords if you leave clickthroughs to chance?

Search engine users want a quality experience – offer them that by taking care of the details of your site that can help work best in the big picture.

View Comments


  posted by Smile Community @ 8:15 AM

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

 

Search


Web W-master

Home

Previous Post

*How To Use AdRotator Within Your WordPress Post / ...

*5 Essential OSX Blogging Tools

*Predictions for the Next 6 Months

*Are you on the first page in the search engines?

*Speedlinking 17 November 2006

*Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Land Coming to a Fe...

*Javascript nodeValue Implementaion: IE Versus Fire...

*The Multiheader - A Huge Trend in Homepage Design

*How to Improve AdSense Ad Relevancy

*Toronto in the Autumn

Archives

*February 2006

*March 2006

*April 2006

*May 2006

*August 2006

*September 2006

*October 2006

*November 2006

*December 2006

Partner Links

Best Offers

RSS Feeds

TOP Blog Links

BlogOmg >> The Best and Most Popular Blogs
Ping Your Blog!
Name:
URL:
Powered By: PingTheEmpire.com