The Value of Meta-Data

A question that gets asked a lot by clients and those interested in search engine optimisation (SEO karachi), is whether there is any point or indeed any value in including meta-data on pages in their site. The short answer is "yes"!What is meta-data?
Meta-data is information about the page. It's not necessarily meant for human users and it serves to tell search engines and web browsers more about your page. This data is found within the < head > section of each webpage.
There are various meta-data elements. The ones that are most important to SEO karachi's are the title, description and keywords tags, however there are a number of others that can also be included on each page.
The language tag for example specifies the natural language of the document, and the meta-robots tag for Google instructs the Googlebot (the Google spider that crawls the web) on how to crawl your site. This tag includes commands such as noindex, nofollow and noarchive. If this tag is used - you can cause the Googlebot not to index, follow links or archive certain pages on your site.
Why bother with meta-data?
It is true that many search engines, in fact most of the major engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN place little value on the meta-keywords and meta-description tags when it comes to ranking pages and relevance.
However, the title tag does carry a fair amount of weight in ranking algorithms - and it's important to have unique, relevant and keyword rich title tags for each page.
This aside, it's considered a best practise to use meta-data and a number of smaller search engines still do use meta-data as part of their ranking algorithms.
Other than the added advantage of possibly netting additional traffic from more obscure search engines, meta-data does have role to play in attracting traffic your site. The meta-description for example is the information or excerpt that is displayed below the link (which is the title-tag) on the Google search results page (SERP).
To maximise value in the description make use of keywords that apply to the page and include a description of the page's content and, where applicable, a call to action. Bear in mind that most search engines bold the search terms in the SERPs so it's worthwhile including these in meta-data for added emphasis.
Some general guidelines to writing meta-data
The best rule of thumb is to keep the information in your meta-data as short, concise and descriptive as possible, while still including keyphrases.
Brevity is key, otherwise you wind up diluting your important keyphrases with superfluous keywords.
Remember that meta-data is often displayed in the SERPs, so make sure that the meta-title and meta-description are well written and appealing.
It's also best to use the main keyphrase first in your meta-data - and to avoid repetition, you don't want to look like a spammer. About the authorAlterSage is an internet marketing consultancy based in Cape Town, South Africa offering a wide variety of tailor-made e-marketing solutions to clients. Online marketing services include search engine optimisation (SEO karachi), pay per click advertising, social media marketing and affiliate marketing.........moor