Are you minding your meta tags? (7)
What are meta tags anyhow? Are they important?
Yep, they are important. Google doesn’t know what your web page is all about without meta tags. This is another facet of how I write SEO friendly content.
Say you write a spectacular article. You polish it up. Did you check the spelling and grammar? The article looks peachy, right? So you hit the publish button and off your article goes into cyber land for the world to see. However, search engines like Google could care less. Your beautiful web page isn’t what the search engines see.
Web pages don’t really look like what you see in a browser. It’s an illusion. Web pages are a collection of gobble-de-gook called HTML code. The editor you used to make your article was actually creating the HTML code behind the scenes which tells computers how to present a web page to the public and search engines. Without HTML code, no one could see your web page.
Why is this important? Well, within the HTML code are your meta tags. Meta tags describe your web page to computers and search engines. Your title, keyword, and page description appear within the HTML code so the search engines know how to index your site. These are called meta tags.
In the old days, webmasters like me had to input the meta tags manually. Here at WA, the recommended meta tag plug in is called All-in-One SEO. It automatically inserts your meta tags for you.
That’s cool. However, I’m old school. I want full control over my meta tags. So I use a plug in that allows me to input my own meta tags to guarantee accuracy.
So meta tags are nothing more than title, keyword, and page description placed neatly within the HTML code so search engines know what to do with your web page. Carefully selecting my meta keyword, putting the keyword in my meta title and meta subtitle, and putting the keyword in the meta page description is key to how I make SEO friendly content which gets me a good rank in search results.
Okay, I know you are lost with all this webmaster jargon. I will explain more about how I do this meta tag stuff later.
(Don't you just hate it when writers tell you "what" but not "how?")
Linda
Reply
That is one great piece of training. Your writing style is so easy to read. I agree wholeheartedly about Yoast SEO. I was using All-In-One but since changing to Yoast, I have gone through my website and worked to get those green buttons shining. I find it so helpful when I am writing a new post or review page.
Loved it. (never got bored once)
Duncan
My nice site is less than a year old, so not as "trusted" as yours, but it is already getting pages and articles that show up front and center on Google searches - and I credit that to having been schooled well on SEO practices. This training adds even more polish, and is much appreciated.
There are a lot of folks who don't know about the linking technique. I thought I had better get that information out there. One requirement for using this technique; don't beat my rank!
Later man. Peace.
What I was referring to in lesson 2 was the text in the article I'm writing. It has nothing to do with meta tags.
I'm running a sweepstakes website and my descriptions are less than 150 words. I started looking up those keywords and found them ranking in the top 5 in Google searches. So word count may be a relative thing.
Yoast really scolds me for writing less than the minimum 300 words though.
~Jan
