Many people in SEO groan at the thought of meta-tags.
After all, meta-tags for ranking is dead for SEO, isn’t it?
Not quite.
In fact, meta-tags have begun a startling revival.
A couple of key points about why you should consider taking meta-tags more seriously:
1. Google duplicate content filters
Google has had real problems this year in determining what may or may not be duplicate content.
Sites with generic, or absence of, meta-description tags, may find themselves going supplemental, or simply not showing properly for their content.
Heck, even well-known sites such as SEOmoz and Threadwatch may have issues here.
Going supplemental is an invitation to traffic loss, so take pre-emptive action by setting up unique meta-description tags on your pages.
2. Clickthrough rates
There’s no point ranking for good keywords if the description under your search engine listing sucks.
Absense of a meta-description at best leaves search engines looking for a random sampling of text that may be relevant.
Why leave it to chance?
Increase your clickthrough rates from listings by actually better controlling the text with the listing by setting up unique meta-descriptions tags for your pages.
And try to ensure you include a marketing hook very quickly in the description tag.
If you are ranking, tell search engine users why your page is so relevant for their query.
3. Ranking
Google doesn’t appear to use meta-keywords to rank webpages/sites.
But Yahoo! does.
Yahoo! still commands a respectable 30% of US search traffic, and even where the market share is really small (such as the UK), strong Yahoo! rankings can still prove very cost-effective.
So add some spice for Yahoo! Search by focusing on your meta-keywords tag.
No, I’m not advising you keyword stuff the tag – but at least make the effort to set up keywords in your tag that Yahoo! can process that for ranking purposes.
Overall
All too often people can get fixated on the details rather than the bigger picture. Decent meta-tags are a part of that bigger picture.
This is especially when it comes to clickthrough rates. After all, what’s the point of ranking for competitive keywords if you leave clickthroughs to chance?
Search engine users want a quality experience – offer them that by taking care of the details of your site that can help work best in the big picture.
By: IBrian
Revenge of the meta-tag!
Online Advertising
The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
I totally agree with you Brian. I have been saying exactly this for months. I actually wrote a post on my blog blog about the importance of the meta description tag.
And of course it will help your ranking, if it helps your CTR it helps your ranking! My theory is that part of Google's algorithm is CTR of organic results (just like they reward PPC ads for a high CTR). And if it isn't, it bleeding should be!! It totally makes sense that a organic result with a relevant meta description tag (related to the keyword the searcher just searched for) is more successful. What does the search engines want to display, RELEVANT results.
And what's more the meta description tag is your chance "hooking in" the user, it's your FREE ad. Just as you write different ad groups in your PPC campaigns to target different keywords so you should write different meta description tags for different pages.
There is no point in being ranked at number one if people don't actually click through on your result! Our job as professional SEOs should not only be getting our clients to the top of the SERPs BUT getting the click throughs. Pay attention to your meta description tags god damn it =)
Using Lisadit's logic, which I agree with entirely, one can conclude meta keyword tags improve website rankings and here's how one might reach that conclusion. Take a misspelling. We can all agree that people are often in a rush and spell things wrong. Let's try to reap the benefits of their rush! I conjecture that a page could get a click through increase (though maybe slight) from people that query a mispelling on accident and see you as a result simply because you included that mispelling on your meta keywords tag. If you have a well ranked sight and are one of few to have thought of this mispelling or "outside the box" possibility of a query that could be intended to reach your page, then you will probably be in the top results for this query. Hence, increase in clickthrough rates. And as Lisadit said, if it helps your clickthrough rate is helps your ranking because a higher clickthrough rate "most likely" is a factor in Google's algorithm (just like they reward PPC ads for a high CTR). The more misspellings and unexpected (though relevant) query's you prepare to accomodate, the better search engine presence you will have. That just leaves one question - why are people not raving about keyword meta tag power and influence? Sure, it's not a weighting factor, but by virtue of the web presence it can afford you through the CTR it can bring when used creatively and thoroughly, it should in the end increase rank. My only fear is penalties... If you have a site on "pizza" and have "piza" in your keywords, will a bot deem this term unrelated because it can be considered, instead of a misspelling, a reference to the "tower of piza" and suddenly you get slammed with a penalty simply because you added a very possible misspelling? I'd love for someone to tell me an answer to THAT! There comes a point where the "relatedness" of your keywords may become subjective and who makes that decision, a robot? How smart do you think they are? Do you think they are able to determine if your misspelling matches a possible mispelling in their opinion of a word that relates to your topic in your opinion? See how confusing and complicated that gets? Some things a machine just cannot do...
I think there's more risk than reward in using the meta keywords tag. I do agree with Brian that the meta description tag can be useful. Like Lisadit, I think of building page titles and meta descriptions much like creating titles and descriptions for PPC ads. You don't just want to rank well, you want the search engine listing to generate clicks. Either create a unique meta description tag for each page or don't use them at all.
Jill Whalen, I can see why you'd be upset about meta keywords being brought up on a prominent blog. But, the topic of the post is meta tags - not *just* meta keywords. Brian makes some good points about the use of both tags.
Despite the possible utitility of using meta keywords for Yahoo, I'd argue that the real beneficiary of your meta keywords are your competitors. Whenever I start work for a new client, I ask them for a list of their competitors and plug those sites into this tool that scrapes the meta keywords. If meta keywords are present (and formatted correctly), the tool will set up links for each keyword for further research via WordTracker, KeywordDiscovery and Overture's suggestion tool. That kickstarts the keyword research process. I love it when companies are foolish enough to use meta keywords. Might as well email your competition a spreadsheet of all of your important keywords used for both SEO and PPC.
Yes, looking at meta keywords is only a minor step in the keyword research process. Still, if companies really do believe they'll rank well if they put important keywords on each page, presumably they'll put useful keywords in the meta tags. If they've done extensive keyword research themselves, might as well use that data.
IOW, do *not* use the meta keywords tag but *do* use the meta description tag. Naturally all of this is IMHO.
Thanks I appreciate that tip!
5 years of finally getting people to realize SEO isn't about meta keyword tags, down the drain in one post. :(
SEO is about many things - but I think in the face of clickthrough concerns and potential duplicate content issues, I think relevant meta-tags needs to be considered as part of the wider SEO remit.
That is hillarious. I 100% agree with you on this Jill :). But then nice post Brian, this was needed I think. Perfect timing. Instead of just worrying about Links ALL the time....alright SOME of the time, the differential time should be better spent in basic optimization of the websites. I remember somebody said "Some New Content + 1 New Link Everyday - Just like the An Apple A Day - Keeps the Doctor Away, in case of SEO works damn good long term".
Meta tags is a W3C thing, "The global structure of an html document" and indirectly relates to a web page's optimal structure.
The TITLE ELEMENT is consistent with web page optimization, "Every HTML document must have a TITLE element in the HEAD section.", W3C says.
whereas meta data,
"HTML lets authors specify meta data -- information about a document rather than document content"
doesn't directly reference ranking or web page optimization.
In addition to mitchenall's line of thinking, imagine if the SE's compare the KEYWORD meta tag to the content of the source document. It should find 1 of 3 conditions:
[1] no meta keywords [2] spam meta keywords [3] appropriately used keywords
The meta data can then be easily used as documented evidence by the SEs as to why a (keyword-spamming or turkey-word stuffing) webmaster's web page is not indexed or has dropped ranking.
My web page analytics search bot uses the keyword/description meta data in this manner (in less than 1/2 of 1 second).
Anyone who doesn't embrace use of the espoused W3C meta data may be short-sheeting oneself.
Kind regards, Al Toman
Stuart L - Wordpress is a hassle free CMS once you set it up correctly. If you are using it for non bloggy business just remove comments, calendar and other useless code. Add sitemap, custom query string, tags, link RSS, initiate Google sitemaps and you are good to go...
Thanks Aaron - I've been using WordPress for a number of blogs for quite some time.
I guess I'm just a control freak and like to to have total control over something and whenever you use a CMS you are always relinquishing some control to whoever designed the CMS.
I understand that some people think that content management systems are better than sliced bread but I'm certainly not one of them.
Wordpress is pretty hassle-free. Then again, you can get hassle out of anything if you bug it enough.
I like Joomla, Drupal, etc. but sometimes you feel like you're trying to carve a new sculpture out of a previously made sculpture. Meanwhile Wordpress offers the basic functionality, plus hundreds of plugins, and you can take it to crazy lengths. I'm working on a full e-commerce website with a product catalogue and shopping cart and I've started with Wordpress and building up from there.
Sweet I love WordPress! I have heard of people buying a modified wordpress script for an ecommerce site before and have always wanted to play with my blog but never have.
Plugins are just so common they have covered all my needs to date. Good work! I am jealous.
Some plugins for wordpress I wish were availbel are reports. Yes I would love a place in the admin where I could see an SEO page analysis. You know, meta descriptions, title, img atls, img titles, meta keywords, etc.
Anyone know of a free or paid solution for this?
Do identical meta description tags put sites in Google's Supplemental Results, or do they just cause the results to collapse with the "repeat the search with the omitted results included" link added?
There is a benefit in putting thought into meta description and keyword tags, but are there any examples of sites that are in the Supplementals just because of the meta description? Do a Google query for site:threadwatch.org for an example. Collapsed results, but not Supplemental.
hi guys its SEO is actually depends on talent and hardworking
And writing good.
Not to mention writing well ;)
My experience is that the meta keywords can be used for establishing an overall theme, and like you touched upon, avoid duplicate content filtering issues, but I think it's far from a vital part in a SEO strategy - as in, you don't start manually tagging 20K pages.
Same goes for Meta description, although if written properly using the targeted keywords and using under 156 characters, it will make your listing look way nicer in Google and possibly also increase your CTR.
(however, if you have a detailed database to work with, you can do it autmatically)
Another thing I just noticed in Google is that the description is displayed in the SERP even though the phrase you're searching for isn't present in the description - I think this must be pretty new behaviour, or?
Sverre
Title tags and meta description tags are great ways to increase your clickthrough rate. They should be informative, natural, and contain relevant keywords--all of this in a balance to benefit both search engines and users. If you focus too much on keywords, you can alienate users. If you don't focus enough, you can disappear in the SERPs. I think that well-written tags really make a difference.
Very well put, Rebecca. :)
You mean are not displayed in the SERPs, right?
Google for example will show any text on the indexed / cached page where the searched key phrase are found. Creating a higher CTR and user experience. In most cases Google totally ignores the meta description tag.
Which is why I have doubts about the description tag increasing CTR on Google.com.
Some excellent points here. I've continued to use meta descriptions and keyword over the years and pretty much always have fields in our CMS and Catalogue systems for site authors to enter this information. For years I've never really thought they make a big difference to search engine rankings, and always tell clients this, however they are useful in other ways. 1. It makes the client think more about the page contents and keywords they are trying to optimise for. If they can't think of a nice short description of the content on a page, the likelyhood is that the page isn't particularly focused, has too much information, or information which doesn't fit together well. Same applies if they need a huge number of keywords. 2. With meta keywords, we can use them as part of a custom search engine for a site, weighting them higher than general page content, although below things like page title. So even if most search engines don't use them, it can help make an internal search engine more relevant with better results. The problem I often find is that certain people still want to add lots and lots of keywords, which spoils the internal search engine results, or just enter keywords for a meta description. One way I've found to help prevent this with the meta description is to simply use it in a visible portion of the site, e.g. when showing a list of products on a catalogue page, use the meta description as a short description, so they are discouraged from just sticking useless keywords in and instead write something more meaningful which reads well, both on the site, and for search engines which use them, the SERPs too. On the CSS front, I've recently found that the Yahoo! YUI CSS Grids are pretty useful as a starting point.
Hi Brian,
I've not noticed Yahoo! taking advantage of META keywords for ranking but they certainly do for mis-spellings. Sticking them in the META prevents you having to put them on the title or page, which looks unprofessional.
Case in point:
https://tinyurl.com/y9ylsc
I'm not sure why someone wouldn't use meta data. It doesn't hurt your results even if the search engines don't look at them and like others have said it would improve your conversion rates.
I've been a meta data user for a long time and feel that it still carries some weight, albeit a little. But we don't know exactly what the SEs will change with their algos. And it makes sense to me that if the common perception is that the SEs wouldn't use them - that eventually, all the meta data spammers will give up and those writing "thematic" pages (content, keywords, meta data all match up) that it would benefit them.
JMO. :)
Jill Whalen said: "5 years of finally getting people to realize SEO isn't about meta keyword tags, down the drain in one post. :("
Come on Jill, you got to stop with the "See I told you so" thing. Meta tags are useful in a number of ways and more in search engines again now that it is harder to game with them. It's a hierarchy thing.
Made a blog post a few weeks ago Google doesn't use description tag for ranking but... regarding the benefit of the creative use of the description tag using some basic test data from a client site.
Creating relevant, accurate and compelling descriptions can help to increase CTR.
And, Google's Matt Cutts confirmed that it is not used in their search algorithm but where the desc tag is relevant it will be used and displayed below the title rather than snippets taken from various page areas.
In some cases, and primarily on a home page, there may be, from necessity, a few keyword ranges being targetted and with the limitation of 165 characters the description tag can't cover them all.
But that can be compensated for and it was Jill Whalen, who has commented above, that highlighted the ability to include multiple descriptions (or, at least, as many as needed) within the tag and that the limit of 165 chars is a display limit not a content one. A second test Using description tag creatively to boost conversion confirmed the theory.
Google appears to treat it as it does for other areas for selecting snippets to display and picks the most relevant text string even from within the meta desc tag as well.
So, if crafted well enough, even with multiple keyword themes on the page your preferred description could still be shown.
meta description for sure is usefull... meta keywords / keyphrases... for yahoo...
but the rest: author? classification? subject? language? country? should somebody bother with those???
The thing about the meta tag is that it was created to hold any type of information, custom information.
<meta name="junkfood" content="candy bars, gum, chocolate, cotton candy" />
In my opinion it’s the xml data feed of the 1990's. You would think that by now the W3C standard would have created tags to replace these all too common meta tags. Like:
<description>Utah SEO Consultant, Entrepreneur, and Student</description>
<keywords>utah seo consultant, bart gibby, seo, meta tags</keywords>
But they have not. Instead they have underused tags like <q>quote</q> and <pre><address>company address</address>.
Which I think is completely LAME!
Speaking of duplicate content, I keep noticing sites build over the standard frameset (Top header, left & right table, main content and page footer) where the right table contain a FAQ giving details on the company.
Problem is, this same right frame loads the same content regardless of the page you visit on the site.
Doesn't that count as duplicate content according to Google?
It was just a joke, Nick - and a bit of sarcasm on my part. I agree completely with Brian's post and the value of the keyword tags for typos. Anything that allows you to rank for typos, without using hidden text or putting typos on your page (making you look unprofessional) is good. I do this myself.
Brian I'll agree that a meta description is important for click through, and I do think if you're going to use them they need to be unique on each page.
But I don't at all think meta keywords are going to play a part in ranking. If your keyword is completely non-competitive, like in the seo-lab link then sure, though a single mention in the page content would do the same thing.
You can't convince me that if I add 'seo' to my meta keywords it will have any affect whatsoever.
cf. Nick Wilsdon's comment's above.
I don’t think that is very fair altherrweb - keyword META may not effect ranking but Brian has shown that it increases visibility. Personally I’ve been after the long tail for years so that matters more to me. :)
We’ve found the same with our mis-spellings – they have produced click through. I hadn't considered the supplemental angle so thanks for that info Brian.
One thing I’ve learnt from blogging is the power of a good headline. As Copyblogger writes*, on average 8 out of 10 people will read the headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest. Why should SERPs be any different?
In that light I think META title/description is making a comeback. Not for old school SEO, keyword stuffing and KWD (Thank God Jill!) but as space for your marketing message.
*https://www.copyblogger.com/magnetic-headlines...
I agree that metatags play an important role in the decision making process and thus on CTR.
And it's not that difficult to teach designer how to write them, because they are really short to write.
Having identical page titles, meta descriptons and meta keywords on all pages will certainly have an effect on rank. Anyone who says these on-page factors have no effect is oversimplifying the issue.
Identical meta content has pushed a lot of my pages into the supplementals. One site I work with has duplicate meta content perpetuated dynamically! Gonna hafta rework that one. This kind of thing makes a compelling argument in favor of a hassle-free CMS, which is the exact opposite of what I have.
"This kind of thing makes a compelling argument in favor of a hassle-free CMS"
I truly doubt that there is such a thing. Every one that I've seen has problems of one kind or another.
I agree that the META description is important to focus on to help distinguish multiple pages for duplicate content in the eyes of the spiders.
If all the pages have the same META descriptions and titles, I've found many instances of where the pages have been moved to the supplemental index, like you said above.
I know many people who simply leave out the META description tags in order to avoid the duplicate content issues and depend on the content of the page to be different... however, most websites display the same exact headers, top navigations, and left column navigation all before the main content is ever read, so they may still feel the effects of duplicate content issues. Unless of course, they plan ahead and put the content first using CSS, but that's a big topic for a whole new post. (Which I will gladly write!)
(Also, anyone else think "Eye of the Spiders" should be made into a song to the tune of "Eye of the Tiger"? Anyone?! :) )
Dude, you are such a dork. I would like to see that article for CSS and content, though... and yes, I'd like a recording of "Eye of the Spiders" too. :)
I've written a couple of those articles already.
Two column: https://www.strictlycss.com/articles/article/3...
Three column: https://www.strictlycss.com/articles/article/4...
An article based on the three column version where the content area has rounded corners: https://www.strictlycss.com/articles/article/4...
A faux column version for a fluid version of the three column article will be added later.
There's a load of good CSS templates - including CSS first - here: https://www.pmob.co.uk/temp/3colfixedtest_sour...
So why not just delete them all togther... and let the spider see for itself that each page is unique or not. We shouldn't need ot tell them what our conten tis about any more.
Its all there right on the page in black and white!
I mean freak, its 2007, not 1999. These spiders are smart.
But Yahoo! does appear to use meta-keywords to rank webpages/sites.
do you have a case study or white papers to backup this statement?
A website I know, BC Sikh Youth, optimized for "Kim Bolan" and ranks #2 on Google and #1 on Yahoo for that term.
For Google, the search result description is the exact same as the meta tag description.
For Yahoo, the search result description starts with the meta tag description and a few words from the middle of the article also appear.
Yeah, what cvos said. Gotta share some proof if you're gonna claim the keywords tag matters like that.
As far back as 2004, Jon Glick (then with Yahoo's search team) explained that keywords is used for matching, not ranking. So, as someone suggested above, you put misspellings in there and maybe the city names your service covers in the local region. In an interview I just posted on my blog, Jon confirmed that nothing has changed with the keywords tag.
But I'd be glad to be proved wrong if there's some good evidence. :)
Apologies for the double post - check this page: https://www.seo-lab.com/seo-lab-tests/meta-tag...
There's a nonsense keyword in the meta-tag, that doesn't appear in the page.
Check the page source for the word, then search for it on Yahoo!.
But that doesn't prove keywords are used for ranking, only for matching. There needs to be some evidence that the keywords improve your *ranking*. This test only proves what Jon G. explained -- use the keywords for misspellings and other words that are potential *matches* for the page, even if the word(s) don't appear on the page.
Thanks for the example. Yahoo may use meta keywords to display their version of supplemental results. I wouldn't go out of my way to add meta keywords to a website.
My point is simply that the document is "ranked" for the keyword present only in the meta-keyword tag.
I'm not saying that it will *increse* your ranking for a targeted keyword - but if you can *increase* the number of searches that your document may be ranked for, then I figure it's an issue to consider.
There may be confusion over the use of language - rank vs matching - but I think this is playing with semantics.
In plain speech, if a person could increase the presence of their website on Google, simply by adding a keyword tag, would they do it?
See Nick Wilsdon's comments about mis-spellings above.
This post is MY SAVIOR!!!! This is exactly the point that has been screaming in my head! You have worded it so eloquently as well. My oh my! Why do people not think of this and make this a central aspect of their entire marketing approach? Think about it, Randfish even has a Whiteboard Friday pointing out that 70% of searches do not fall under the "most widely searched keywords." So 70% of the time you get people typing in "outside of the box" queries and yet they may very well be looking for the page on your site but just didn't type the words you chose to focus on. Result: The guy who has the keywords that this person queries GETS the customer. You do not. So can someone PLEASE tell me why ANYONE would EVER SAY that the keyword tag is useless? Misspellings alone will surely ride in tons of traffic. Add to that odd phrases that relate to the page's topic....
Case in point: my grandma calls Nike shoes "the shoe with the check mark." If she wanted to buy some of these online, she would search "shoe with a check mark." Well if Nike.com doesn't have the word "check" or "mark" on their site, or not in proximity of eachother, then they will not show up in her search results! This means they lose her as a customer. Why do sites not plan for these circumstances and try to cover for any possible query that may be geared toward their product. Fear of being marked as a keyword stuffer? Why must there be penalties for keyword stuffing, as if this were spam, if you are in good faith merely trying to serve your customer by making their query process as easy as possible for them. They don't have to say the magic word. They just have to describe what they want the best they can and your site's keyword and key phrase listings will get them connected to you. Why can't this be applauded and used to help the queryer and the business connect in the searches better and more efficiently. I find myself typing query after query before finding answers I need. It's all about wording it just right and I think you shouldn't have to! Someone please tell me you understand and agree that this is an issue that needs to be addressed in search engine rules or worked around somehow in a whitehat way.
Please feel free to private message me on this because I imagine this post (being buried in a 6 month old blog) will not likely be seen or responded to any time soon! :(
One of my https://somethinglocal.comhas significant duplicate content issues. I've been told a number of times to use a Mod-rewrite for my metatags... Is there a series of diagnostics to run to identify what it is about the site that gets it slammed for duplicate content?
Now that's funny Jill! Maybe you should start "SEO Bitch" back up and call out I, Brian for his ridiculous posts with no supporting evidence :)
"Sites with generic, or absence of, meta-description tags, may find themselves going supplemental, or simply not showing properly for their content."
I am not sure that is true, I have blogs where I forgot to enable the meta tag/keyword/tag plugins and they are doing fine from good basic/well written content.
Have you noticed a messy Google SERP lately with RSS feeds showing instead of content?
There's no proof similar/identical META descriptions actually cause supplemental problems, but there's a strong corellation.
"they are doing fine from good basic/well written content."
You don't know why they're doing fine either. You may assume its because of well-written content (sure, go ahead, pat yourself on the back :)), but I have plenty of meaty, original articles that's *gone* supplemental.
Lack of META description may not result in similar description snippets if Google has no problems finding the content on your page. If Google can't find the content (mainly due to convoluted HTML structure) and you have a bunch of nav text on top of your source code, Google will resort to picking up meaningless text starting from right below the BODY tag.
I intentionally don't use META description tags on one of my blogs because I know how Google constructs description snippets.
Regarding the max length of META descriptions, I've read on cre8siteforums (forgot who said it) it applies to sentences, not to the entire tag. So you have have multiple sentences targeting different keywords in a single tag, each sentence around 150 chars give or take. That should improve CTR since different targetted description snippets show up for different queries.
I believe that it was Ron Carnell, and it was a great suggestion. He suggested 120 words per sentence, but als the use of more than one sentence if you wanted to build nice, persuasive descriptions for more than one keyword.
Of course, you don't want to write a novel there, but having a couple of sentences probably isn't going to be harmful.
hey all, foe SEO meta tag plays impoetent role.don't ignore
In regards to a meta description being better to display on search engine listings, I have seen the opposite argument be made.
If you have a highly optimized page, it will ideally rank for more than one keyword. What if this keyword is not represented in your meta description? In this example you will have what appears to be a non relevant listing within the search results, and your click through rate will suffer.
Why not let the search engine's decide what the relevant description is for your site based on the actual search that was done? The description, might not be as clean, but at least it will be relevant.
I think that in certain cases it's better to let the search engine pull a meta description tag (e.g. Craigslist posts), but other times I think it's better to write it yourself to ensure that it's clean, readable, and exactly what you want.