Meta Tags & Titles

Meta tags provide information about a given web page, most often to help search engines categorize them correctly. They are inserted into the HTML document, but are often not directly visible to a user visiting the site.

Meta tags and titles are important. Google does not put too much emphasis on meta keywords anymore, but they are still required. Place your important keywords to the front of the description. If your website is about electrical services and they are based in the Midlands then the following meta’s are appropriate for that kind of web site.  If the main keyword that people would search on are for ‘electricians midlands’ then they should appear higher up in the meta description and this gives more weight to those keywords. Meta descriptions are best kept to fewer than 30 words.

e.g.
<title>LAH Electrical Contractors - Electricians Contractor Midlands, Birmingham</title>
<meta http-equiv="description" content="Midlands based electrical contractor and electricians. At LAH Electrical Contractors we pride ourselves on a high standard of electrician workmanship in Birmingham. "/>
<meta http-equiv="keywords" content="electrical, contractor, contractors, electricians, electrician, lah, l.a.h., midlands, birmingham, testing, appliances, appliance, alarms, alarm" />

If you have many products or services on your website, then it is advisable to target one page with one keyword.  If you have a page about ‘alarms’, then you can amend your meta tags and title for that page.

E.g.
<title>House Alarms Installation – Birmingham, Midlands</title>
<meta http-equiv="description" content="Installation of house alarms by Midlands based electrical contractor and electricians. At LAH Electrical Contractors we pride ourselves on a high standard of electrician workmanship in Birmingham. "/>
<meta http-equiv="keywords" content="electrical, contractor, contractors, electricians, electrician, lah, l.a.h., midlands, birmingham, testing, appliances, appliance, alarms, alarm, house" />

Select the most common phrase likely to be used by potential visitors. However, by concentrating effort on your site as a whole, it will also improve the response to many other keyword phrases that potential visitors might use.

Search engines vary in their preferred length for meta tags. Try to use the smaller number, 150 characters, for your site. Never make your metatag more than 250 characters long because some results pages will cut it off. At the moment, Google seems to display a maximum of 156 characters.

Dont's - Quality guidelines from Google;

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
  
• Don't use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
  
• Don't send automated queries to Google.
  
• Don't load pages with irrelevant keywords.
  
• Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
  
• Don't create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware.
  
• Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
  
• If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.