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Title & Meta Tag Rules for Search Engine Optimization

If you are a web publisher or want to be one, then, chances are, you’ve heard a little something-something search engine optimization. Books, web sites and courses are devoted to this particular concept. Despite reports to the contrary, the art of the Meta and title tags is NOT dead. If you follow a few simple rules, you can use these babies almost effortlessly and ensure that you’re ahead of the game in getting a consistent traffic flow to your site.

<TITLE></TITLE> - The Title Tag is included in the header information <HEAD></HEAD>. It shows up in the top bar of the browser when said browser calls up the web page as a result of the end-user typing in the URL or clicking on it from another web page, etc. Search Engines use title tags to gather information about your site.

The title should relate to what’s on the page and be specific. If page A is the welcome page of site XYZ, then a good title tag example would be:

<TITLE>Welcome to Site XYZ</TITLE>

It’s clear, concise and to the point. It describes what’s on the page. Your readers will appreciate a simple title that explains exactly what they’ll find on the page.

<META></META> - Meta tags are also included in the header information <HEAD></HEAD>. They, like the title tags, are used by search engines for a variety of purposes. The best Meta tags to use are the “description” Meta tag and the “keywords” Meta tag. These will help define what’s found on your page and ensure that an end-user who’s searching for information on your topic, will find it.

For this article, the Meta tags could be:

A few rules to go by:

*Don’t use special formatting in the “” of the keywords or description Meta tag. That will mess up search engines. Stick to dashes (-) instead of colons (:) and keep “quotation marks” out of the meat of the description because they are already worked into the code.

*In the “description” tag, try not to exceed 255 characters. Otherwise, your description may be too long-winded (read: boring). Also, not all search engines will be able to pick the entire description up if it’s very long. An incomplete description doesn’t have the suspense factor you’d think it would. In fact, it tends to keep web users away.

*Include as many variations of spellings as you can in the “keywords” tag. Yes, that includes mis-spellings. For example:

kat, cat, katt, kitty, kitten, kitty-cat, kitty cat, cats

*Also in the “keywords” tag, use plural when you can and more often than you’d normally think you should.

*Don’t add arbitrary keywords. You have to make sure that the keywords you include are in the article at least twice.

Now that you know how to use the title and Meta tag information to your best advantage, you have a leg up on the competition. You have an invaluable tool for driving traffic to your site and a way to ensure that the content is consistent with your keywords, descriptions and titles. If you follow these rules, you will ensure, to paraphrase the line in Field of Dreams, that “now that you’ve built it (your web site), they (the end-user) will come.”