“I would like to ask a question about SEO. How do you write proper title, keyword, description tag for a website. Can you provide some examples of how to write a proper one?” – Kelvin Tan
Hi Kelvin,
There are two considerations in writing those tags. The first one is the SEO aspect and the second one is the marketing aspect. I’ll cover both of them in this reply.
1) The technical aspect of writing SEO friendly title, keyword and description tags
For the beginners, let me show you where to find the title, keyword and description tags in a typical html code.
Title tag – <title>….</title>
Keyword tag – <meta name=”keywords” content=”….”>
Description tag – <meta name=”description” content=”….”>
Search engines now place little importance to keyword and description tag. But as a good practice, it’s always good to include the keyword phrase in the keyword and description tags.
For example, if I’m trying to optimize a page for “debt reduction strategies”, my keyword and description tags will be as follow:
Keyword tag – <meta name=”keywords” content=”debt reduction strategies”>
Description tag – <meta name=”description” content=”blar blar…. debt reduction strategies.. blar blar”>
Technically speaking, you can put any ‘meat’ to fill the rest of the description tag. For me, I simply use the first sentence of my article as the description tag, since the first sentence of my article will always consist of the keyword phrase (another good SEO practice).
In SEO, what is more important is the title tag.
Technically, your title tag should try to meet the following requirements:
i) Your title tag must have the ‘exact’ keyword phrase in it.
I don’t have to explain this one, do I?
ii) Your title tag should preferably be as short as possible.
There is such a thing called keyword dilution in SEO. It means if there are too many words in your title, the importance of your main keyword phrase will be ‘diluted’ in the eyes of the search engines. So try to keep your title short.
To illustrate, if my keyword phrase is “debt reduction strategies”, some examples of a good title include
– Debt Reduction Strategies
– 7 Debt Reduction Strategies
– Pitfalls and Traps of Debt Reduction Strategies
– Creative Debt Reduction Strategies
I didn’t think of these titles. These are the top 4 titles returned by Google search.
2) The marketing aspect of writing the title tag
Your title tag is very important, not only for SEO but also for human.
Why?
Because when someone does a search, he/she will first see the title in the search result.
Therefore, when writing a title, besides making sure that it fulfills the SEO requirements, you also have to do your best to write something that can entice people to click.
This is the marketing aspect of writing a good title tag, something that is hard to teach my freelance writers. :(
Notes On Description Tag
Search engines will show your description tag as the description in the search result. (Thanks to our member Proson for pointing this out.)
This means if you want to perfect a page, you should try to write something enticing in your description tag as well.
For me, I usually don’t bother. I only make sure that the exact keyword phrase is present in the description tag. That will be enough for SEO purpose.
Kenneth,
Your topic today is very relevant for those who are new or who has little knowledge about writing the meta tags (tittle, description and keywords).
But, not all of us has an access to metatags especially when we are promoting ‘other people websites’ or when we are resellers. In this case, we should promote as many links as we can by using different tittles. But, the keywords must relevant to the contents of the pages.
Let say I want to promote my referral page LeadsLeap.com in many directories. Normally, I will develop many tittles but keyword ‘leadsleap’ must be in the tittles. For examples, “Viral Marketing through Leadsleap”, “Promote Your Websites With Leadsleap Strategy”, “Advertising and Leadsleap”, “Blogging using Leadsleap”….and many more.
Goodluck and thanks Kenneth.
Unique, valuable, niche content should be the goal of every webmaster especially VRE/blog owners. SEO does help a lot to get search engine traffic but it can only compliment. Ultimately it’s the real value that keeps bringing back visitors again and again. If we choose the right keywords (think demand/supply) and spread those keywords in the article/content using right keyword density then we have a nice cake of content that search engines love to eat. It all begins with a keyword search by the surfer, so keywords are very important in SEO and content in general. SEO services are costly so it’s better to learn atleast the basic SEO tips and tricks using self-study :)
Good guide
Kenneth,
Thank you very much. Your guide help me a lot. I am a newbie to SEO.
Can google index the page that need to sign in? Can you give me a hint or source that can help me find the answer. Thank you
It depends on how secure your sign in is. In most cases, it’s not possible to index such pages.
Thank you, very much, but what about more than one keyword, if I have 2-3 keywords which I want to optimize on the title tag, what we have to do? can we add the Keywords in the Title?? “Exact” keyowrd is what??? pls explain
The author of this blog explain these not simple things well.I agree about meta names.I think need to pay more attention to the content
can you explasin how is a good keyword combination, i mean can i repeat the same words ie “furniture,chaep furniture,furniture online”. i repeat 3 times..can i do that?
Keyword meta tag is not very important. Just insert your keyword phrase once, i.e. cheap furniture online. Overly repeating furniture may not be a good idea.
I agree with most of this, but per the description tag…Google still gives some importance to this, and pulls snippets from this to display in search results. It’s a delicate balance writing this for SEO and human readability.
Kenneth, Many webmasters (Newbies especially) starts websites using wordpress these days. There are some great tools and plugins available for WordPress like SEOPressor which optimize posts for titles, keyword and descriptions just like you discussed above. It is almost newbie friendly too.
I like all of these techniques. It will be helpful for me as well as other webmaster. Thank You very much.
do you have suggestion for how much repeating text in meta title ?
I have just started to seo my web page and i found it very informative.
Thanks
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