For the life of me, I just can’t understand how so many people can have Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) so wrong for so long. Just to check, it is 2009, right?
SEO Horror
I’ve recently been asked to make some changes to an existing website. How could I refuse, brand new client, well designed website. I then had a look at the source code for the home page, in particular the title, keyword and description tags. My first thoughts were ‘amusing’. The description tag, despite being a long monotonous story was, at a pinch, relatively within the subject area. But the keywords were anything but.
I then proceeded to look at the tags for all the remaining pages of the site, only to discover they were an exact copy of what was on the home page. Oh, and by the way, the title tag, was the name of the company. Well, I suppose that’s better than having nothing there at all.
The big issue for me is that it appears that websites such as this, are sold under the guise of having been optimised. Whereas, optimised they are not.
Using title and description tags to best effect
I’m going to be a bit loose and liberal here, but hope you’ll see the point. The emphasis placed on meta tags is misplaced. From an optimisation perspective the important tags where care needs to be taken are the title and description tags. The title tag should give the reader and idea about what the subject of the page is.
The description tag serves a slightly different purpose. This should be used to invite people to open the page. In some ways this is like and advert that calls the reader on a search engine page to action. And yes, both the title and description tags should contain the appropriate keywords!
Keyword tag
As far as the keyword tag is concerned, none of the major search engines are going to penalise you if you don’t have this tag - in fact they don’t even look at it. That said, I still use the keyword tag, but more as an aid to remind and help me focus on what the exact keywords for that page are.
In the seven years that I have been optimising websites it is the title tag, meta description and meta keywords tag that are the most widely misunderstood SEO methods on the web. Thousands of New Zealand web sites will struggle to gain top Google rankings due to poor title tag and meta tag optimisation.
Also, I never cease to be astounded by the number of web design companies that claim to be leading experts in search engine optimisation, yet don’t know how to create a simple title tag. This is basic SEO 101 stuff that every good search engine professional should know about.
Ideally each important page should have a different title tag and each title should contain the primary search words for the page. Just think of a title as you would a headline on a newspaper billboard. It is the “attention” grabber that makes you want to buy a paper and read the story.
The meta description on the other hand describes what the page is all about in 150 characters or less. It should be written in an enticing way to help promote a click-through and should also repeat the primary keywords for the page.
Title and meta description tag length is also vitallly important, yet I have found few web designers that truly understand this. Instead they create extra long title and description tags that get cut off in search engine results pages and never make any sense to the reader.
Even when a web page has been highly optimised, it is poor title tags and meta description tags that can easily sabotage your click-through rates and subsequent enquiries or sales. You may rank No 1 on Google for your important keyword phrase but this will be of little use if your title and description makes no sense to the reader.
Instead of clicking on your listing a potential customer is more likely to click on a more appealing description that get’s them excited and makes them want to view the page.