Title Meta Tag

The is the most important of all meta tags as the most popular search engines place a priority on the title and when a browser searches for a word which is in the title, the site is more likely to be placed in the top pages of the search.  The smaller the title is, the more likely it is to get top placement.  It should never be more than 80 characters.  If possible, the three most important keywords should be included in the page title.

Keywords

Keywords should always be selected by the client because they are most familiar with their business and can best determine how a customer seeking their products or services would search.  These are the words and/or phrases that a browser would input into the search parameters in a search engine to find your clients services.

In your meta tags, you should use no more than 20 keywords and 3 of those should be taken from the title.  Make sure that the keywords are your best possible keywords.  Some search engines only take 5 while others accept 20 or more, so you want the first 5 to be the most relevant.  Don’t ever repeat keywords because search engines will ignore them.  All keywords should be lower case, separated by commas.

Descriptions

In the search engines, your site description is displayed with the title followed by 2-3 lines of your description.  Small descriptions receive more attention; however, up to 240 characters is acceptable.  Your keywords can be repeated in your description, but should be used in proper sentences.  Simply listing your keywords can get your site de-listed.  The description is very important because when your site comes up in the search engine, the browser sees the description and compares it to other descriptions to determine which sites they wish to visit.

Other tips

v    Every page does not have to use the same meta tags.  Select the meta tags that are most relevant to the information provided on the page; but make sure that every page has a set of meta tags.

v    Repeat your keywords within the text of the HTML page; however, be sure that they are contained in proper sentences.  Don’t ever just list the words.

v    You can use auto submission search engine software to assist you with the search engine submissions.