What the Heck is SEO, #3: Meta Tags

In my last post in this series, we talked about the importance of title tags. Now we're going to continue our story in the airport bookstore... 

So you've narrowed it down to two books based on their titles. What's your next step in deciding which one to buy and which one to put back on the shelf before you head to your boarding gate? I don't know about you, but I read the inside flap which provides a description of the contents of the book. 

So do Google and Bing! The description of each page of your website is contained in the description meta tag, which is a snippet of HTML code that looks like this: 

<meta content="description of this web page" name="description">

There is some disagreement over exactly how Google and Bing index and serve your description meta tag, and how much weight it is given. But published guidelines suggest that Bing gives at least some weight to the description meta tag, and we know for a fact that Google at least reads it, indexes it, and serves it in its search results. 

"Your description meta tag is often the first 'ad copy' search engine users see."

The real importance of the description meta tag comes into play in search engine results pages (SERPs), because more often than not, your description meta tag is served as the description of your web page in the search engine results (below the hyperlinked title tag):

Thus, your description meta tag is often the first "ad copy" search engine users see. It needs to be compelling, engaging, and to the point, and it should paint a clear picture of what your business does and why someone should click through to your website!

Published guidelines suggest your description meta tag should be less than 150 characters in length (anything longer is snipped anyway). 

One final note on the description meta tag - if it is left blank, the search engines will just grab a snippet of text from somewhere on the page and show this in the search results. Sometimes they do this anyway if their algorithm suggests some other content on the page is more relevant, but having a well written description meta tag is the only way to exert some control over what search engines display in their results.

"Having a well written description meta tag is the only way to exert some control over what search engines display in their results."

[Do It Yourself Tip: Many small business owners use a template based website or an online web editor, and it's not always obvious which field in your web editor fills the description meta tag. So here's a handy to check yours right now!]

Another meta tag you may hear of is the keyword meta tag. Your keyword meta tag is a snippet of HTML code in each page of your website that looks like this:

<meta content="keywords associated with this web page, separated by commas" name="keywords">

Now you may be thinking, "that sounds too easy!". It is, and the keyword meta tag is disregarded by Google and given little weight by Bing and other search engines. Adding a few keywords to your keyword meta tag won't hurt anything, but it probably won't help either.

"The keyword meta tag is disregarded by Google and given little weight by Bing and other search engines. Adding a few keywords to your keyword meta tag won't hurt anything, but it probably won't help either."

There are several other meta tags that can be used on each page of your website, but none of them has much of an impact on SEO, so I won't get into the weeds here.

Instead, let's back to the bookstore! So you've read the descriptions, but they both sound good and you still can't decide which book to buy. What would you do next? How about open the book and flip through the content to see if it looks interesting?

Bing-o (no pun intended!). Check out my next post on Content and Headers! 

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Jeff Copeland is a real estate broker and property manager in St Petersburg, Florida, and broker/owner of Copeland Morgan LLC. You can find him on Bigger Pockets under @Jeff Copeland.