{"id":341,"date":"2010-09-05T16:17:16","date_gmt":"2010-09-06T00:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.numinix.com\/blog\/?p=341"},"modified":"2019-05-29T11:17:13","modified_gmt":"2019-05-29T18:17:13","slug":"getting-better-search-results-from-your-meta-tags","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.numinix.com\/blog\/getting-better-search-results-from-your-meta-tags\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting Better Search Results From Your META Tags"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Better search results (not just rankings) are the goal of most any website owner.\u00a0 If you want people to be able to find you amongst the kajillion pages on Google, Bing, or Yahoooo!, you have to write great meta tags.\u00a0 If you are a webmaster, programmer, or designer, then this is probably review for you.\u00a0 Pay attention anyway because sometimes we forget things.\u00a0 For the website owner, you may have no idea what a meta tag is.\u00a0 Meta tags are incorporated into the HTML code of your webpage.\u00a0 They affect both how a site appears in search results, and how high or low it can appear on the page.\u00a0 The three most common meta tags are TITLE, DESCRIPTION, and KEYWORDS.\u00a0 Each of these is important for different reasons.\u00a0 Let&#8217;s take a look at a page result from Google\u00a0 and then we will break it down into more detail.<\/p>\n<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_82_2 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-grey ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<div class=\"ez-toc-title-container\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<span class=\"ez-toc-title-toggle\"><a href=\"#\" class=\"ez-toc-pull-right ez-toc-btn ez-toc-btn-xs ez-toc-btn-default ez-toc-toggle\" aria-label=\"Toggle Table of Content\"><span class=\"ez-toc-js-icon-con\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-3' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"#\" data-href=\"https:\/\/www.numinix.com\/blog\/getting-better-search-results-from-your-meta-tags\/#Google_Search_Engine_Result_for_%E2%80%9CZen_Cart%E2%80%9D\" >Google Search Engine Result for &#8220;Zen Cart&#8221;<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"#\" data-href=\"https:\/\/www.numinix.com\/blog\/getting-better-search-results-from-your-meta-tags\/#TITLE\" >TITLE<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"#\" data-href=\"https:\/\/www.numinix.com\/blog\/getting-better-search-results-from-your-meta-tags\/#DESCRIPTION\" >DESCRIPTION<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"#\" data-href=\"https:\/\/www.numinix.com\/blog\/getting-better-search-results-from-your-meta-tags\/#KEYWORDS\" >KEYWORDS<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Google_Search_Engine_Result_for_%E2%80%9CZen_Cart%E2%80%9D\"><\/span>Google Search Engine Result for &#8220;Zen Cart&#8221;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-347 aligncenter\" title=\"search_results\" src=\"https:\/\/www.numinix.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/search_results.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"540\" height=\"171\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.numinix.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/search_results.jpg 540w, https:\/\/www.numinix.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/search_results-300x95.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\" \/><\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"TITLE\"><\/span>TITLE<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>This tag might be the most important of all the meta tags.\u00a0 This tag determines both the clickable title of a webpage in the search results, and the title that appears in the browser bar when the webpage is displayed.\u00a0 Writing a great TITLE tag is as simple as remembering these steps:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Each page of the website should have a unique TITLE<\/li>\n<li>You want the beginning of the TITLE to incorporate your main keyword for that page.<\/li>\n<li>Put the name of your company at the end of the TITLE<\/li>\n<li>Keep the TITLE to 65 characters or less to avoid having part of it cut off by the search engine or browser.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"DESCRIPTION\"><\/span>DESCRIPTION<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Your description tag appears directly below your title in the search results.\u00a0 It should be written not for the robots and crawlers, but for the visitors that will be clicking through to your site.\u00a0 A few things that might help with creating this tag include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Keep it simple, relevant, and intriguing to the user.\u00a0 Don&#8217;t give too much away, but don&#8217;t be too vague either.<\/li>\n<li>Keep the length between 125-175 characters.<\/li>\n<li>Be sure to use your keywords and keyword phrases so that they will appear in bold in the search results.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"KEYWORDS\"><\/span>KEYWORDS<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>The KEYWORD tag is not as important as TITLE and DESCRIPTION.\u00a0 Many search engines don&#8217;t use this tag as a ranking factor.\u00a0 There are some that do, so it is best to make it a part of your HTML code anyway.\u00a0 Keep this in mind as your create this tag:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Don&#8217;t write any of the words more than once, and try and keep the number or keywords\/phrases below fifteen.<\/li>\n<li>Use keywords that were not already utilized in your TITLE and DESCRIPTION tags.<\/li>\n<li>Make sure the words are relevant, and that they can be found elsewhere in the content of your page.\u00a0 Otherwise, penalties could ensue.<\/li>\n<li>The proper separator for keywords is the comma.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now then, in the example above the site circled in green represents one that meets all, or most of the characteristics listed above for both the TITLE and DESCRIPTION tags.\u00a0 Note that the company name is at the end of the title, and that the description is relevant, makes sense to the reader, and is of the proper length.\u00a0 The example circled in red has one or more elements that need some improvement.\u00a0 Can you find them?\u00a0 If so, then you are well on your way to developing great META tags that will make your search engine results more readable, move you up the results page, and drive those targeted, potential customers to your website.<\/p>\n<p><script type=\"application\/ld+json\">\n      {\n        \"@context\": \"http:\/\/schema.org\",\n        \"@type\": \"NewsArticle\",\n\t\"dateModified\": \"https:\/\/calendar.google.com\/calendar\/r\/day\/2019\/5\/29\",\n\t\"mainEntityOfPage\": 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Google, Bing, or Yahoooo!, you have to write great meta tags.\u00a0 If you are a webmaster, programmer, or designer, then this is probably review for you.\u00a0&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[171,38,170,172,137],"class_list":["post-341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-search-engine-optimization","tag-description","tag-keywords","tag-meta-tags","tag-search-engine-result","tag-title"],"modified_by":"Numinix Developer","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.numinix.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.numinix.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.numinix.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.numinix.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/54"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.numinix.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.numinix.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.numinix.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.numinix.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.numinix.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}