Web marketing resources

The case for Meta Tags

Meta Tags are special HTML tags that provide information about a Web page without affecting how the page is displayed. Meta tags were originally designed to assist search engines in categorising information on the web. The idea was to allow search engines to rank pages using keywords and a description provided by the page author.

This was a fine idea but unfortunately many unscrupulous web site operators used various techniques to artificially boost the ranking of their website. These included repeating keywords or even including keywords that were not relevant. This has meant that the importance of Meta tags has been reduced as the Search Engines reacted to this spamming. Search engines now evaluate the whole page and look at the combinations of all important HTML elements on the web page to determine search relevance. These elements include the Page title, Headings, keyword density in the page content and Meta tags. This means that Meta tags still play an important part in gaining good search engine rankings.

It is important to consider each web page as a whole. For example include keywords in the page title and heading as well as in the Meta tags. The content of the page should be consistent with the main keywords, and the keywords should also appear in the content.

Excessive use of Meta keywords or repeating keywords in the content too many times will be detrimental to good rankings. A commonly accepted ballpark is to limit the keyword density to 2% of the content. Two common pitfalls are using a single word as a keyword and then repeating it the keyword list (for example 'web, web design, web site,') and using derivatives of words such as 'design, designs, designing, designer'. And using keywords that do not relate to the content of the page is fatal to good listings.

We have seen that the search engines do not ignore Meta tags, but it is critical to use the tags and keywords in context. The keywords should be meaningful and relevant to the content and not overdone or needlessly repeated.

Meta tags are still important to success on the search engines and your Content Management System should allow seamless editing and publication of Meta tags. The Inigo system provides full control of the Meta tags displayed on your web page to ensure that you achieve the best possible position on the search engines with the minimum of effort.