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How to Create Search Engine Friendly Title and META Tags (Part 2)
By Kalena Jordan (c) 2007

In Part 1 of this article (http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/
2007/nov/28.html), I defined Title Elements and META Tags and
took you step-by-step through how to create an optimized Title
Element. Now it's time to create your optimized META Description
Tag.

Create Your META Description Tag

Take your list of target keywords and phrases and open
another text file. Again, you can use an existing sample
META Description Tag as your template. Let's say our existing
description is:

<META name="description" content="Miami Florists create
beautiful floral bouquets, arrangements, tributes and displays
for all occasions, including weddings, Valentines Day, parties
and corporate events. Deliveries throughout Florida.">

You can make your META Description Tag as long as you like, but
only a certain portion of it will get indexed and displayed by
search engines. According to Danny Sullivan in his (old but
still relevant) article How to Use HTML Meta Tags
(http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/article.php/2167931),
200 to 250 characters of the META Description gets indexed but
less than that gets displayed, depending on the search engine.
So you want to make sure all your important keywords are listed
towards the start of the tag.

Now take your list of keywords for the home page in order of
importance. For our fictional florist these were:

  - florists Miami
  - florists Florida
  - wedding bouquets

Now you need to create a readable sentence or two describing
your web site and incorporating these keywords so they make the
best use of the keyword real estate available.

Because search engines often display the contents of the META
Description Tag in the search results, it is very important that
your sentences make grammatical sense and are enticing enough to
encourage readers to click on your link. Let's start with:

'If you're seeking a florist in Miami Florida, Funky Florists
create unforgettable wedding bouquets, floral arrangements,
tributes and displays for all occasions.'

Ok, so that's around 150 characters long and gets our three
important keyword phrases included. But it's a bit bland. We
need to add something to entice the searcher to click on it. How
about:

'Order online for a 10 percent discount!'

So now we have the following completed META Description Tag:

<META name="description" content="If you're seeking a florist
in Miami Florida, Funky Florists create unforgettable wedding
bouquets, floral arrangements, tributes and displays for all
occasions. Order online for a 10 percent discount!">

Our new tag is optimized for our keyword phrases, it's around
200 characters in length, it describes our site accurately, it
speaks to the reader and it (hopefully) entices them to click on
the link and view the site.

Create Your META Keywords Tag

We're almost there. Now it's time to create your optimized META
Keywords Tag. Let me stress here that this Tag is quite
unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Not many of the
search crawlers even support it any more. You can see which ones
do on this page (http://searchengineland.com/070905-194221.php).
If you have the time and you really want to create META Keywords
tags for your pages, then go ahead, but if not, then leave them
out of your code altogether. This tag will have very little
impact on your overall SEO campaign.

Assuming you do want to create a Keywords tag, take your list of
target keywords and phrases and open another text file. Again,
you can use an existing sample META Keywords Tag as your
template. Let's say our existing Keywords Tag is:

<META name="keywords" content="flowers, roses, weddings
bouquets, florists, floral arrangements, flower deliveries,
Valentines Day gifts, Christmas decorations, Mother's Day,
tributes, wreaths, clutches, sprays, in sympathy, funerals,
corporate functions, parties, floral displays, Miami,
Florida">

You are just including a list of related keywords to include in
this tag. Now take your list of keywords for the home page in
order of importance. For our fictional florist these were:

  - florists Miami
  - florists Florida
  - wedding bouquets

Because you have a lot more room in this tag, a good rule of
thumb for creating a META Keywords Tag is to include the
keywords and phrases you are targeting with your site content,
as well as some terms that you don't necessarily want to use in
your site copy but are still relevant to the site content. For
example, the site copy, TITLE and META description tags would
include the most important search keywords, but the META
Keywords Tag could be used for keyword variations and
combinations that don't appear in the visible site text, but
that people may also search for. Examples include plurals,
contractions, slang, variations, misspellings, cultural nuances
and industry jargon.

For our fictional florist, these may include things like:

  - wedding flowers
  - roses
  - wedding roses
  - Valentine's Day roses
  - sympathy gifts
  - Mother's Day gifts
  - funeral wreaths
  - flower deliveries
  - floral arrangements
  - birthday gifts
  - flowers
  - flowers for wedding
  - wedding decorations

So now we have the following draft META Keywords Tag:

<META name="keywords" content="florists Miami, florists
Florida, wedding bouquets, wedding flowers, roses, wedding
roses, Valentine's Day roses, sympathy gifts, Mother's Day
gifts, funeral wreaths, flower deliveries, floral arrangements,
birthday gifts, flowers, flowers for wedding, wedding
decorations">

However, when creating your Keywords Tag, you should not repeat
any particular keywords within your META Keywords Tag more than
five times and I would recommend excluding commas so that all
your keywords can be indexed in combination with each other.

So we need to fix the draft tag to remove the excess repetition
of the words "flowers" and "weddings". This is easy to do
because some of the keyword phrases already incorporate these
single generic keywords.

For starters, we can lose the single "flowers" as it is already
covered by some of the other phrases like "wedding flowers".
Next, we can drop "roses for the same reason. Then we can
combine some keyword phrases together to save space, e.g.
"flowers for wedding" and "wedding decorations" can be
integrated to become "flowers for wedding decorations" so we
can lose the extra instance of "wedding".

So now we have the following completed META Keywords Tag:

<META name="keywords" content="florists Miami florists
Florida wedding bouquets wedding flowers wedding roses
Valentine's Day roses sympathy gifts Mother's Day gifts funeral
wreaths flower deliveries floral arrangements birthday gifts
flowers for wedding decorations">

Tailored TITLE and META Tags

While some webmasters remember to include a META Description and
a META Keywords Tag in their home page HTML code, many forget to
include them on every page of the site that they want indexed.
Or worse, they duplicate the homepage TITLE and META Tags on all
other pages. To give a web site the best ranking ability
possible, it is highly recommended that each page of the site
include a unique TITLE tag and unique META tags, individually
tailored to the content of that specific page.

For example, our fictional Miami florist may have a page devoted
to wedding bouquets and another devoted to funeral wreaths. The
TITLE and META tags for the first page should include keywords
relating to weddings and the page about wreaths should utilize
keywords relating to funerals and sympathy.

The use of tailored TITLE and META Tags on each page creates
multiple entry points to a web site and enables relevant content
to be found in search engines no matter where it resides on a
site. For example, instead of relying on visitors to arrive via
the Home Page, the optimization of individual site pages makes
each page more visible in the search engines, providing
additional gateways to the site's content. The more pages
optimized, the wider the range of keywords and phrases that can
be targeted and the more entry points are created to a site.
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Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine
optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and
respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as
running a daily Search Engine Advice Column
(http://www.searchenginecollege.com/blog.htm), Kalena manages
Search Engine College (http://www.searchenginecollege.com/) - an
online training institution offering instructor-led short courses
and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization
and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.
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