What are Website Metatags ?

For those of you who are thinking of buying a website and aren't familiar with the "inside workings" of a website, meta tags refers to the embedded data that is available to the search engine robots as they crawl around the web, rating websites for content and relevancy.

The Google bots then 'Index' the findings, and when a searcher looks for a particular phrase ; e.g. 'London Taxi' or 'Bosham Gardener'; the search engine is able to deliver the most relevant sites on the results page.

Website Metatags are somewhere between 'important' and 'quite' important as standalone entities, but 'very important', when taken alongside landing page (generally Home page) content.

There are two major metatags 1. Meta Description 2. Keywords

The meta description is the Description that a googler (other search engines are available!) will see underneath the Title of your website on the results page of a search. So in terms of passing quick information about your site to searchers, it's quite important. However, if you are on Page 10, no one will see it anyway.

A Meta description might read something like, 'Bosham Gardening Services. Lawnmowing, Hedgecutting, General Garden Maintenance by well established local company'

The Meta Keywords, used to be very important but are now fair to middling as stand alone. Keywords might look like;

'Bosham Gardening Services, Bosham, Hedgecutting, Garden, Maintenance'

Where the real value of meta tags comes into it's own, is where the data within them, corresponds very closely with the content on your landing page (generally Home page).

So if your landing page has the Title

'Bosham Gardening Services',

and body text such as

'Bosham Gardening Services are a local Garden Maintenance Company established since 1986. We can solve all your gardening maintenance problems while you sit back and enjoy the results. Our specialities are Regular Hedgecutting and Lawnmowing, preparing your garden for pleasure, not work'

..then you are half way to pleasing the search engine bots. The search engine robots will recognise that the description they will present on the results page is clearly very relevant to the keywords and to the content on your page. It would prefer to display your site as a result above one that didn't present itself as so relevant.

Page content alone is absolute KING, however, if you make your metadata relevant to your content, you give your site a pretty good boost.

This and other organic factors will help you reach page 1