Tasha Harrison

Meta data is information that sits in the code of your site. You don’t actually see it on your page, but it is how search engines display your pages in their results and how they judge what your site is about.

There are two important parts of meta data:

1. Page Title
2. Meta Description

There are also meta keywords, but these are no longer regarded by Google since it became too easy to cheat. See Google’s reasons for why on the Google Webmaster blog.

Below is an example of how the information is displayed on Google.

Note how the meta description ends with ‘…’. This is because the meta description is too long, it is 37 words or 228 characters, but should actually be nearer 150 characters.

The description is an opportunity for you to sell your site and increase your click through rate from Google. If it is appealing to your audience then they will be more likely to click through to your site than to your competitors.

The page title also appears on the browser.

The page title is a good indicator for Google to tell what your site is about, so make sure you include your main keywords in it. The ideal length is between 60 – 65 characters.

And remember that it is used by real humans as well as the bots, so make it people friendly.

Writing the meta data for your website can be one of the most laborious tasks, but it is also one of the most important parts of launching any new site or improving your existing site.

There are three types of meta data that relate directly to search engine optimisation (SEO). They are:

• Title tag/Page title: this is the title that your browser will give to the page. It is also the first port of call for the search engines when they examine your site. It tells them exactly what your page is about. Search engines use this title in your listing.
• Meta description: this should compliment your page title and give a little more detail about the content of the page. Search engines use this description in your listing.
• Meta keywords: keyword stuffing used to be a common ‘trick’ for getting your site to rank highly on Google and as a consequence the meta keywords were given a much smaller significance.  In essence they are a way of telling search engines which keywords your page is relevant to.

The reason the page title is the most important is that it holds the highest relevance for search engines, so make sure that each page has a unique page title that explains exactly what that page is about and remember to keep it brief. I always like to put the name of the company in the title to help build brand recognition in the listings on Google.

For example, a site called Clothesonline will have a page title for its blue jeans of:

Blue denim jeans – Clothesonline

For the black jeans page:

Black denim jeans – Clothesonline

And so on – it really is that simple, but very effective.