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Head Elements <head></head>
Title Element <title></title>
1) Keep it concise. The more terms you have in the title, then theoretically the less weight gets passed to each. Too short and you could miss out on some additional terms, too long and you start to lose the value. Quite often you'll see sites that try to include all their targeted keywords in the homepage title -- don't do it. Instead, have a dedicated page for each term where you can focus the title and page contents on just that term. Most sites will have more traffic landing on inner pages than the homepage, so there's just no need to try and get all your keywords on the one page.
2) Don't repeat keywords unnecessarily. You get no additional benefit from repeating keywords and if done excessively it can end up looking ridiculous to potential visitors (see point 3 below). Take for example a title such as "Widgets - Red Widgets, Blue Widgets, White Widgets | Widget Store". This could easily be rewritten as "Red, White and Blue Widgets from the Widget Store", as well as several other possible variations.
3) Let it read well. The title of your site in the search results will almost always be taken from the content of the title element on the page. It's important therefore that it reads well for any potential visitors. There's no point ranking #1 if you're going to lose visitors because your title puts them off. Such problems could be caused by excessive repetition (making it look spammy) for example.
4) Including your site name. This is very much down to personal preference. Some like to include the site name in every title throughout the site, others only on the homepage. If your site has particularly good branding and is already well known then it may be worth including on every page -- those searching may be encouraged to select your listing in the search results by being reassured by the presence of your brand in the title. For most sites though it is of questionable value. Your homepage should be the main page that ranks for your site's name, thus repeating it across all pages will have no real benefit in terms of SEO, and all the while you're potentially reducing the weight of the other keywords (see point 1 above).
5) Keep it unique. Often you see sites where the same title is repeated throughout (these tend to be dynamic sites that use a common header without the ability to adjust the title). This is a criminal waste of potential. Given the value of the title element, each page should have a title that isn't repeated elsewhere within the site. The title should be targeted to the contents of that page alone.
6) WOW!! - Look, FREE Advice. As already mentioned, titles are there for potential visitors and not just search engines. When creating titles, also consider the benefit of terms that catch the eye when they appear in the SERPs, eg WOW, FREE, LOOK, NOW. Although they may not have any ranking benefit (sometimes, but not always), it could make your title stand out enough against those of your competitors to get the click-through even if you rank lower. EGOL wrote a post about this some time ago: Three Secrets to making a LOT more money!.
7) Synonyms. If you're struggling to compete for a particular search query, don't discount the value of targeting a slightly less competitive synonym in your title for a while. It could result in more traffic than ranking lower for a more popular term, and your page will still have relevance to the original keyword. With more traffic comes the potential for more links, strengthening the page so that later you may be in a better position to compete for the original keyword.
Meta Keywords <meta name="keywords" content="" />
Here we go with the first of the misconceptions. Meta keywords have no real-world effect on your SERPs. Let's repeat that so it really sinks in: meta keywords have no real-world effect on your SERPs.
When search engines first appeared way back in the very early days of the internet, they were very basic at best and a far cry from the search engines we know today. It wasn't long before SEOs started manipulating their meta keyword tags, stuffing them full of unrelated terms and generally abusing their original purpose. Search engines therefore counteracted this by ignoring meta keywords in their ranking algorithms. When Google came onto the scene, meta keywords were already out of use for determining relevancy and ranking positions.
Unfortunately, the perceived value of meta keywords has still persisted against all evidence to the contrary. Often an argument is put forward that if they don't hurt, why not use them. They do hurt your time though -- spending 5 minutes per page working on a meta keywords list adds up. On a ten page site that's nearly an hour, on a hundred page site that's a full working day! If you've got that much time to waste needlessly you need to find yourself a hobby!
Another frequently asked question is "how do I format the keywords". Should they be comma separated, commas with spaces, one word or multi word terms, etc. Since meta keywords don't affect your ranks and play no part in SEO, it really doesn't make any difference. Just leave them out, then you don't need to worry. Instead worry about how much content your competitors developed while you were dwelling on your meta keywords.
Meta Description <meta name="description" content="" />
Now to one of the most contentious issues we currently have on SEOChat: the meta description tag. First of all, like the meta keywords tag, search engines do not use the content to determine relevancy and search result positions. Adding or editing your meta description will have no effect on where you appear for any given search term.
Where the meta description is still used is as a potential source for the page description that appears in the search results. Great, so a well crafted meta description can give us a nice boost in click-through when our site appears for a search; where's the contention there? I'm glad you asked -- read on.
It was Fathom who first raised the issue on SEOChat, that relying on meta descriptions for your site's SERPs description is a problem for several reasons. As already mentioned, the meta description is just one potential source for the search engines. The main search engines all have the ability to create snippets -- taking one or two highly relevant strings from the page content and formatting it into a description, emphasising the searched terms in the process. The page content isn't restricted to a small number of characters as is the meta description, with the resultant benefit that you can include far more possible search matches than you ever could with a meta description. The page content also has the added benefit that it does contribute towards relevancy and ranking, unlike the meta tag. If we allow the search engines to create our description for us out of our content, there is a much greater chance that the description will be more accurately matched to the search term. Don't forget that your pages will naturally rank for many more search terms than you can anticipate, and there is no way you can craft a meta description that will be relevant for all of them.
So why then don't we create a meta description as a catch-all for those times that the search engines can't create a good snippet from our content? Well you can, but ultimately you're hiding the problem -- the problem that your content isn't optimised for that search term. Far better to take a look at the content and adjust it where necessary (either editing the existing text, or creating new content), with the added benefit that improving it will also potentially help your rankings.
Ok, so I've removed the meta description tag from my page, but now when it appears for a site: search in Google, all I get as the description is the main navigation links, how is that supposed to be helpful and what to do about it? Well, you needn't do anything really. Those navigation links are appearing because they're the first thing on the page, and without a search term in the query there's nothing to base a snippet on, ergo Google just uses the first piece of content. How many people though come to your site via a simple site: search rather than using a search term? I would suggest that almost none do, and that the only person that does a site: search is yourself. Potentially a competitor might, but then they're not going to be a beneficial visitor that buys something, or clicks on your ads, etc. If you really are concerned about your navigation appearing thus, then move it. Adjust the layout and make sure that it's your content that appears first in the page structure and the navigation later --again, resolving the underlying issue rather than relying on a meta description to cover it up.
Many are scared that removing their meta descriptions will impact them negatively, to which I would say that myself and several other members have all done so and have seen no decrease in SERPs positions, nor any reduction in click-through rates. The whole issue of whether or not to use meta descriptions has been discussed at great length on these forums, so I would suggest reading those posts as well.
Meta Robots <meta name="robots" content="" />
This is one meta tag that you do want to pay attention to, even though most pages won't require it. By default search engines will try to index and crawl your site, so inserting index,follow is just a waste of typing time.
If you don't want the page to appear in the search results, then use noindex. Likewise, if you don't want search engines to follow any links on the page, then use nofollow. Noarchive instructs the search engines the you don't want a cached version to be available. It won't stop them indexing the page though.
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