Introduction

Is Meta Data still important?

Meta Data (previously known as Meta Tags) has had an up and down past in terms of the perceived significance that the search engines put towards it. With many web designers and SEOs still telling clients that Meta Data is unimportant and ignored by the search engines, we felt the need to offer clarity and by using a live example we hope to set the record straight!

There are three main elements to Meta Data:

1. Meta Title
2. Meta Description
3. Meta Keywords

The Meta Title

The name of a page on your website

So, if we look at www.boost-local.co.uk then you will see that the Meta Title is “Fast, Effective SEO from Boost Local”. This is reflected in the page name seen in the image below.

This Meta Title then makes up the blue link on your Google listing as seen in the Google search results below. So, pretty important!

The Meta Description

The strangest one!

A couple of years ago we would have said that it’s not that important, it was seemingly being ignored by the search engines. However, over the last 12 months we have seen Google reintroduce this in to their search results, and it's now absolutely crucial to your search listing. It’s your sales pitch. See below, our search listing on Google with our Meta Description clearly being displayed as the main description. This text is not featured anywhere on our site other than within the Meta Description. So again pretty important!

The Meta Keywords

Now, this is an interesting one!

From a search engine point of view these are irrelevant. None of the search engines take this data in to account at all. On the face of it we can understand why many web designers and SEOs would advise that there is no merit in adding these at all. However, this would be a narrow minded view. We all agree that back links are very important from a ranking point of view, and that many of these back links will come from directories and indexes. Lots of these directories and indexes still use the Meta Keywords in order to sort the relevance of your website and without them in place they may not be able to list your site at all. They are the least important but still well worth adding in to each page of your website.

How to do it

It couldn’t be easier

If you are already a Boost Local client then you will know that within each campaign’s initial report (downloadable from within your control panel) is new Meta Data that we suggest adding in to your site. It will take either yourself or web designer no more than an hour to add in and if your still stuck don't worry we can do it for you.