Using the META Title Tag and Other META Tags

As the world of SEO has changed and evolved, one of the most important factors today for your site’s ranking has been the proper usage of the META title tag. The title tag often gets overlooked when compared with other factors like keywords in your content. However, it should be looked at as one of the most important elements for proper SEO. Remember these important rules, guidelines and considerations for the META tags and you’ll begin to see better results.

First of all, the recent news that has everybody talking is that the major search engines have announced that they no longer use the META keywords tag. In fact, Google hasn’t used the META keywords tag for years. This comes as a surprise to many people who have focused their SEO efforts on this, however everyone can now put the debate to rest. Neither Google nor Yahoo! use META keywords to determine a site’s ranking in the results.

That doesn’t mean you should stop all of your work with META tags however. As mentioned, the META title tag is still very important for SEO. Your META title tag is what gets displayed at the top of a page, in the browser bar window and is also what gets displayed when your site is shown in the search engine results.

Therefore you should try to incorporate one or two of your keywords into your META title tag so you can improve your rankings for them. However, while you do this you have to keep the overall character length of your title limited. A good rule of thumb is to keep your title under 65 or 60 characters in length. Anything more and it will get cut off. So do your best to incorporate a few of your keywords while keeping the length down to ensure they get included and displayed.

Moving onto the META description tag for SEO purposes, it is also a fantastic spot to put some of those keywords that you used to write down in your META keywords tag. You’ll have more room to work with in your description, generally up to 160 characters. This will allow you to write a short sentence or two to describe your page and once again include a few of your targeted keywords and phrases.

Once again, anything more than this and your content will be cut off. Brevity is key, and remember to not try to just list your keywords one after the other. Work a few of your keywords into the text, but be sure to still make them legitimate, understandable descriptions.

A decade ago it seemed that META keywords were the most important SEO factor. Then as time went on, it became gradually less important, and now it’s not used at all. That’s the way that the world of SEO works. Now, the META title and description tags have gained great importance to helping your ranking. So include them on all of your pages and use them properly to see great SEO results.

Take a look at more useful information on online marketing. Check out our affordable and effective SEO Services, Free SEO Tools, Articles and more at Effective Search Engine Marketing Services at RankFast.net.