When developing a website, many people forget that its Meta tag is in fact one of the most important aspects of it. As a result, sites that have not included this vital piece of information will more often than not find themselves languishing at the bottom of search rankings. Below is a little advice on how to perform the task of meta tag writing that will enable these tags to be SEO friendly as well as compelling enough to lure visitors to a website.

Keep it Short and Simple

Most experts agree that when you engage in meta tag writing, your description should be kept as short as possible while still providing much needed information to potential site visitors. In most cases, it is recommended that the length of any meta description be kept to 160 characters or less – including the spaces between words. Although it is permissible to use all 160 characters per meta tag description, it is normally recommended that you get to the point in as few characters as possible, as a tag that is excessively long will often be cut off by Google – especially if the search engine giant deems your meta tag writing skills to be of spam-like quality.

Your Word Order should Make Sense

When compiling a site’s meta tag, many people make the mistake of using this as an opportunity to stuff this section of a site with as many keywords as possible. However, this is one of the quickest ways to ensure that Google classifies a site as spam-ridden and shoves it as low down as possible in search results. If you have keywords that you’d like to add into a meta tag, these should be entered in such a way that the description reads as naturally as possible.

An example of a well written meta tag is:

Good

“Belgian chocolates| Home of the world’s finest chocolate selection,”

While a poor example would be:

Bad                                                                                        

 “Belgian chocolates| chocolates from Belgium| buy Belgian chocolates.”
 

Don’t Duplicate Words

If your business is selling numerous varieties of a particular item, it may sometimes be tempting to repeat a keyword in its website meta description. For example, you may be selling different types of chocolates, so you may inadvertently use descriptions such as “white chocolate | Belgian chocolate | Turkish chocolate | English chocolate” when instead, you could craft your tag along the lines of “Range of chocolates including white, Belgian, Turkish and English” instead. This would still enable you to show visitors know how extensive your product range is, but without having to frustrate them with words that have been repeated unnecessarily.

When enough time is invested in high quality meta tag writing, the website in question will not only receive the amount of traffic that it deserves; it will also find itself being ranked far higher in search engine results than sites that have either not utilized this feature to its full potential or that have merely stuffed their meta descriptions full of unnecessary keywords.