The very reason for search engine optimization (SEO) is to let your target market reach you. The SEO process involves great amount of money, time and effort so you never want to make a faulty step. In optimizing your website, you have to take into consideration all the factors that affect traffic and rankings. This means you have to make sure your webpage is effectively described by your meta tags.

Meta tags are important words placed in the header of a web page to allow the search engine to locate this page. This enables the searcher to find the information that he’s looking for. Meta tags can be a concise summary of your article comprising of the most important words in your webpage content. There are two important tags that search engine use for indexing: the “keyword meta tag” and the “description meta tag.” Although meta tags are not the only factors that determine your web site ranking, these should not be left out of your page.

The keywords meta tag is a list of the most important terms in your page. You may list ten to 15 terms which precisely describe your page content. However, having more than 15 words in your keywords meta tag could result to confusing page content. There is a very stiff competition on search engine placement, so it is wise that your page is focused to only one or two keywords or phrases. Be smart in choosing keywords or phrases in your webpage because if search engine does not find your web site, it is possible that you place the wrong terms in your keywords meta tag. For instance, if your company sells cars then instead of using the general term “car” in your keywords meta tag, you put the “name” of your company in it. So in this case, no matter how good your website or company is, people will not find you. Remember that searchers seldom look for specific company names in the search engine.

Description meta tag, on the other hand, serves as the synopsis of your website. This should consist of not less than 25 but should not exceed 200 characters including spaces. In creating your description meta tag, it is important that your keywords are properly cued because there are instances that search engines actually show the entire description meta tag in its search engine results page (SERP) when a keyword or phrase is queried. Description meta tag is yet another vital part of your page’s overall ranking since it serves as the initial contact of the searchers to your website. However, you should not abuse the use of keywords in your tag by using them over and over again. This will allow most search engines to penalize your ranking.

Both meta tags enable the search engine to properly index your website, which creates more visibility for your webpage. It is imperative, therefore, that you invest your time and energy in coming up with a well-thought description of your webpage. Careful planning and proper use of keywords and phrases in your meta tags can draw traffic into your page. This will eventually grant your website more searchers and high rankings.