DIY SEO Health Check-up
In last week’s article Meta Tags & Title Tag Part One we described the overwhelming importance of the Title tag as well as key mistakes to avoid when creating it. In this week’s follow up Part Two we will describe the value of the Description tag and Keyword tag and lastly show you how to find them so you can evaluate.
Description Meta Tag
While not as important as the Title tag the Description tag is still indeed very important and deserves your attention and creativity. It is a short description of what your page is about in under two hundred characters (this isn’t a rule but it’s a common practice). Think of it as an expansion of your Title tag, which goes into further detail.
We have the same admonishments for the Description tag that we have for the Title tag:
1) Keep it spam free. Write naturally for the USER and NOT for the search engine. This does not mean ‘don’t put in keywords’. Of course you must put in your keywords however not to the point where it no longer reads naturally.
2) Keep it focused to the content of the actual page itself.
3) Keep it brief, under 200 words.
4) Keep it fresh! Don’t use the same description tag for all pages! Get creative and have a unique Description tag for each page.
Keyword Meta Tag
Not as potent as it used to be and truth be told is now completely useless, we present to you the Keyword meta tag. “How could that be?” You might say. Surely since it is called the ‘keyword tag’ it must be of the utmost importance. In days of old it certainly was but due to abuse by SEOs Google subsequently removed the Keyword meta tag from its algorithm and has formally stated that it does not use the Keyword meta tag in its web ranking.
With the above in mind, in doing your DIY SEO Health Check-up you can completely ignore the Keyword tag.
Reference:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/keywords-meta-tag-in-web-search/
Check your Site
Title Tag
Now that we have a basic understanding of said tags let’s see if your website has them and if they are proper. In light of what was said of the Keyword tag, we will only be checking the Title tag and the Description Tag.
As we did in previous articles you will need to go to your website’s home page, and then ‘view source’ in your browser. Once you have done that you need to search in the source code pop up window by pressing CTRL+F on your keyboard. Copy & paste this: <title>
Hopefully it found it (if it didn’t your page does not have a title tag!). If it found it then you can take a look and see what your title tag says.
Compare what you see against the points we mentioned before:
1) Too many kewords/Spammy. Remember to keep ALL text on your website (be it text in your meta tags or otherwise) natural. If it feels or looks weird then you have ‘Over-SEO’d’ it.
2) Too long. Keep it under 70 characters.
3) Choose keywords which represent specifically the content on that page itself. Keep it relevant to the content of that page.
4) Duplicate title tags. Keep title tags unique and descriptive. Don’t just put your company name as the title tag for every page on your website.
Do this for every page in your website (then you will be able to see if you have duplicate title tags as point #4 above).
Description Tag
Next, do the exact same thing but this time search for this in the source code pop up window: <meta name
This will take you to your page’s meta description at which point you can compare it against the points:
1) Keep it spam free. Write naturally for the USER and NOT for the search engine. This does not mean ‘don’t put in keywords’. Of course you must put in your keywords however not to the point where it no longer reads naturally.
2) Keep it focused to the content of the actual page itself.
3) Keep it brief, under 200 words.
4) Keep it fresh! Don’t use the same description tag for all pages! Get creative and have a unique description tag for each page.
Conclusion
Using the above information you can empower you self to take control of your website and its search engine ranking. However if you found the task too daunting by all means contact us at Clearimaging to sign up for our Advanced SEO packages, where we do all the work for you.
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