Tag! You’re It!
By Melanie Parschauer. Filed in Marketing |
Tag! You’re it!
HTML Title Tags, Meta Tags and Header Tags Explained
According to comScore figures, approximately 91 million Google searches happen each day! So how does Google know where to rank your website, your competitors site and the like? Many factors are at play, but most search engines pick up on tags buried within HTML code. Here’s a quick primer on the types of tags and what they’re all about.
HTML Title Tags, (the most important): HTML title tags are embedded phrases within the code of your website that help search engines understand what your webpage is about. Search engines scour billions of websites looking for HTML title tags to learn what your webpage is all about. Then your page is ranked based on the relevance of the title tag. When developing an HTML title tag it is important to conduct keyword research and create a tag that will best describe what your page is about.
Meta Tags: Meta tags have are the dinosaurs of the digital world. The meta tag description is one of the oldest supported HTML elements and is simply a description that summarizes what your webpage is about. Though some search engine professionals feel that meta tags do not influence ranking, others suggest that meta tags are merely descriptions that increase the odds of a potential visitor to click on your link. It is important to note, just because you craft a descriptive meta tag, does not necessarily mean that it will be used. Google and other search engines have the freedom to write their own descriptions about your site and often do.
Header Tags: Think of header tags as book titles. The title of a book tells you the main idea of what the book is about. Head tags accomplish the same goal. A common mistake is to create header tags that are too long or too complicated. Creating lengthy header tags is like creating a paragraph to be your book title. If you feel that it is absolutely necessary to have more than one sentence in your header tag, create a main title description and follow it with a more descriptive sub-headline. Though header tags are not a necessity, they can be effective in increasing ranking and providing your prospective site visitor with factual information about your site.
So how do you write a descriptive tags to increase your site’s search engine ranking? Well-written and effective HTML tags, Meta tags and header tags often include the following components according to Google:
1.) Showcase facts about your page that are not necessarily in the title of your page.
2.) Your tag descriptions should be unique to each page of your site.
3.) Tag descriptions should be simple, concise and easy to read.