Briefly about the main SEO tags. Rules for filling title, description, keywords and the formation of a snippet in the search engine

30.07.2019 Iron

The title and description of the site is the first thing a user encounters in search results. Their informativeness and attractiveness directly depend on how you write the meta tags. This article is for beginner SEO professionals and website owners who are self-optimizing. Find out how to write Title, Description, Keywords correctly, and what are the requirements for them.

What are the meta tags Title, Description, Keywords

Meta tagsare elements in the HTML code that are needed to inform search engines about the content of a page.

The meta tags Title, Description and Keywords are not displayed on the site in any way, they can be seen only in the code, in the head tag. When a user types in a query in the search bar, the system can generate the search result using meta tags.

Search engines are constantly evolving. Therefore, at the moment they are more likely to "take note" of the meta tags, and make the final conclusions about the content of the page on a variety of factors.

So, to form a snippet, they can sometimes use Description, but they can also compose it themselves from the content of the site. But experts recommend prescribing Title and Description anyway. The situation with the Keywords meta tag is a little different, but we'll talk about that in the corresponding section.

Why add Title and Description meta tags

To clearly articulate what your page is about, display a clickable headline, highlight your competitive edge.
If the system chooses to generate a snippet on its own, the result may not be the text you need.
Thanks to correctly spelled meta tags, the site will be shown for relevant queries.
Filling in meta tags is a fairly straightforward process that can have a positive impact on rankings and increase conversions.

Below we will talk about the requirements for each of the described meta tags, but they combine two points. First, they must be unique within the site and not duplicated on different pages. Second, they must match the content of the page and its semantics. To compose the described meta tags, it is necessary to compose a semantic core and take into account the structure of the site.

How to fill in the meta Title tag

Title indicates the title of the page, and it affects the promotion of the site in the search results for keywords. This meta tag looks like this in the head block:

Title</ Title>An example of a Title tag in the site code:Title is also displayed as the title of the open site in the browser - this is how it looks on the example of the Ringostat site:<h3>Title requirements:</h3><ul><li>contains up to 70 characters or up to 600 pixels for Google - this system measures the length in them;</li><li>keywords are placed closer to the beginning of the Title - in the first 1-4 words;</li><li>does not contain keywords for which the page is not promoted - for example, in the Title of the website of an online store, you should not write "free shipping";</li><li>the company is indicated at the end - the exception is large brands, for example, Rozetka, Gucci, etc.;</li><li>keywords are not duplicated - use synonyms if necessary;</li><li>Title must be different from H1, the first order title;</li><li>does not contain a listing of all possible regions and the entire range;</li><li>written without using caps;</li><li>the text is readable, without inconsistent phrases - you should not just list the keywords;</li><li>it is advisable to use one language for one page,as Google advises ; </li><li>Not recommended use different Title tags for mobile and desktop pages.</li> </ul>Bad example of Title:Computers. Prices in Nikolaev. Buy computers in Nikolaev.A good example of Title:A computer in Nikolaev. Buy Computer at Supplier Price, Free Shipping | World of technology<h2>What to write in Description</h2>The Meta Description tag is an element that describes the content of a page. In the code, it looks like this:<meta name="description" content="Description" /> Example of Description tag in code <h3>Description requirements:</h3><ul><li>the meta tag contains from 70 to 155 characters, for Google from 400 to 930 pixels;</li><li>starts with a keyword;</li><li>consists of coherent text;</li><li>does not duplicate Title;</li><li>describes a competitive advantage, USP - the user should have a desire to go to the site;</li><li>contains a call to action;</li><li>ends with a period or exclamation mark;</li><li>not too short and contains enough keywords;</li><li>does not duplicate a piece of content from the site;</li><li>does not contain special characters (= / \ + _ in the middle of the text, but you can use various graphic icons at the end of the ad to attract the attention of users.</li> </ul> From the author: Hi all. You can talk a lot about search engine optimization, but if you don't know how to fill in the meta tags correctly, then it doesn't make any sense. Since this is so important, let's understand in more detail. <h3>Title is the most important element in website optimization</h3> <img src='https://i1.wp.com/webformyself.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/429/1.jpg' align="center" width="100%" loading=lazy loading=lazy> In terms of importance and impact on results, the page title is the most important element. It's important not to confuse it with the h1 heading you see directly on the page. This is the title of an article or page, while title is shown only in search results and in the title of a browser tab. Why is it desirable to write the title as long as possible? This allows you to add more information to it, as well as make the user click on it. For example, which title do you think is better? How to increase site speed? How to Increase Website Speed: 10 Most Powerful Tips? What title would you click on? It may even be that the first page will contain more useful and interesting information on the topic, but most people will prefer to go to the second, because there are some “powerful tips” and a person is already eager to find out which ones. In addition to the fact that this makes your headline attractive than the competition, you also follow the rule of correct filling. In the first case, there were barely 30 characters in the title, in the second - all 50. Many go even further and make titles even longer - 70-120 characters! But I think this is extra work. First, you need to make it so that it completely fits into one line in the search results. This means that you need to limit yourself to 50-60 characters. If one word or several letters does not fit already, then it's okay, but deliberately make long headings? I don't think it makes any sense. Of course, in this case, it becomes possible to insert additional keywords, but are you trying to trick the search engine in this way? It is very important not to deceive him, today this is punished. In addition, the search robot can simply ignore all unnecessary words in the Title if they do not fit into 60 characters. <h3>Errors in Title</h3> The main mistake that can be observed is the presence of the site name at the end of the title. It's one thing when you manually assigned it to a specific record, and another thing when the name is added automatically, because you simply configured the engine incorrectly. Example: How to pick mushrooms? How to pick mushrooms? Experienced Forester's Blog And if the “blog of an experienced forester” is repeated in all titles, then I don't see anything good in that. First, instead, you could add some specifics to the title, make it more voluminous and interesting. Another mistake is spam. Not all people probably understand today that everything is not so simple. If you screw the keys into the title, then you will not get to the first place in the search. The main mistakes are that people try to insert several keywords in the title or even repeat them. For example: Order pizza in Kiev, order with a discount, delivery quickly This title looks very unnatural, as if it was composed by a robot based on human requests. Nobody forbids using several keys in Title, but they must be inserted organically. In this case, the repetition of one word was clearly superfluous, and the phrase itself is poorly connected with each other. Be creative and provide specific information in your headlines? Remember the example above about the 10 most powerful ways. So, already upon going to the site, a person will know that he can read about these 10 methods and they are probably good. And even if all 10 do not help him, he will still get some benefit. Here's another piece of advice - don't lie. If you wrote only 5 tips, write in the title. People don't like it when they receive less than expected. In general, I hope you now clearly understand what a meta title tag is and how to write it correctly. <h3>How to fill in the meta description tag</h3> <img src='https://i2.wp.com/webformyself.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/429/2.png' align="center" height="157" width="280" loading=lazy loading=lazy> Okay, with the title, everything is more or less clear. What about the short page description? The optimal description size is 130-160 characters. It is advisable not to do less, since then it will not be informative enough, but it makes no sense to do longer either. In the meta description, try to describe as accurately and briefly as possible everything that the person will receive on the page. Again, it is very important here to become an average person for a while and imagine the search results with your site. How would you like to see the description? I'll tell you that creativity and specificity win here too. The text should enthrall the reader, he should encourage him to take action to continue reading by going to your resource. In general, you are encouraged to have a sense of humor, because it will sometimes dilute boring descriptions. Of course, these are all just recommendations. I can confidently say that if you apply them at least partially, there will be benefits. If not applied at all, it is unlikely to be a disaster for your project. Because the search engine hardly rates descriptions for their creativity and interest. Remember, interesting descriptions are for people. And by doing for people, you can get encouragement from the search engine. How? Well, judge for yourself, what will happen if each of your posts has a catchy title and a cool description? In search results, your pages will definitely get more clicks, even if they are not in the first place in the search results. And if so, over time, perhaps your site will move higher in the search, and purely due to behavioral factors. Natural behavioral factors, I want to emphasize. <h3>Keywords died?</h3> In general, today there are 2 meta tags that are required to be filled in. These are title and description, that is, the title and short description of the page. This is what forms the snippet in the first place. In addition, there are keywords, but today more and more SEOs understand that filling in this tag does not play a special role. Why can you say so? Firstly, those who have been following search engine optimization for a long time probably know or have heard that earlier it was possible to punch more keywords into the text than necessary and this could work. The same applies to keywords - there are keywords, the more the better. What is it today? The situation has changed a lot for the better. Spam will no longer be able to occupy the top. Moreover, you can get punished for overspamming keywords. Today you need to adhere to a much more accurate promotion strategy. In particular, it makes no sense to repeat the same phrase 5 times in keywords. Most SEOs today do this: Do not fill in keywords at all. By the way, it doesn't even exist by default in the very popular SEO WordPress plugin - Yoast. They fill in keywords, but at the same time they do it so that it does not look like spam. The main purpose of this meta tag - today - is to inform the search engine about the most used words in the text. You can do either of these two ways and you will be right. There are many different opinions. Someone thinks that the meta tag is generally not perceived by search engines. One thing can be said - incorrect filling of the tag can only harm, and the correct one will not bring any significant benefit. <h3>Outcome</h3> Well, now you know how to fill in meta tags correctly, what to write in them and how to do it. If you read some more or less sensible book on advertising in Yandex.Direct, then there will certainly be a lot of attention to the compilation of ad titles. This is obvious because there are clickable titles and there are non-clickable ones. There are interesting descriptions, and there are uninteresting ones. Accordingly, our task with you is to write interesting not only texts, but also meta tags, because the user sees them in the search results. You can find more information about meta tags and their effect on search engine optimization in our. It also provides valuable and specific information. Well, on this I will say goodbye to you. Optimize your meta tags and stay on top! What are meta tags? Meta tags are special html tags found in a container <head>and are designed to transfer information about the site to browsers and search engines. For example, when crawling your resource, search robots collect page titles, site descriptions, keywords, author data and other information contained in tags <meta>... Before showing the page of the user's site, the browser does the same in order to understand in what form the site should be displayed for a PC or for a smartphone. In this post, meta tags will be viewed through a lens. And you will be able to find out the basic rules for filling them out, analyzing and checking them using the webmaster's tools. <h3>Types of meta tags:</h3> <ul><li>title (page titles);</li> <li>description (short description of the page);</li> <li>keywords (keywords);</li> <li>technical meta tags (responsible for the correct display of the page).</li> </ul><h2>How to fill in meta tags correctly</h2> From an SEO point of view, the main meta tags of a site are Title, Description and Keywords. Therefore, we will consider the correctness of their filling. Again, they must all be located between the tags. <head> </head> and not anywhere else in the code. <h3>Title</h3> Meta tag <TITLE>is responsible for the page title and is displayed as a line of text on the browser tab. For the search engine promotion of the site, it is necessary that the keyword is as close as possible to the beginning of the Title or is the very first. If the site is being promoted in any region, write the name of the city or region. This is followed by a selling or clarifying additive. Finally, in order to make the title unique, after the straight line we insert the name of the site or company For instance: <ol><li>For a commercial site: «Buy a laptop in Moscow - prices from 19990 r in the online store | site.ru "</li> <li>For an information site: «How to properly grow aloe at home | Gardener»</li> </ol>In order for the title not to be cut off when displayed in search engine results, the title must be no more than 65 characters long. <title>Page title

Description

The Meta Description tag is responsible for describing the essence of the information on the page in several sentences. A conventional search engine takes information from this tag to form a snippet in the search results.

The description should also include the direct entry of the keyword (if possible, supplemented with a different word form), talk about the advantages of your proposal, plus serves as a promo for the main content of the page. Let's try to compose page descriptions for the two examples mentioned above.

Examples:

“Buy a laptop in Moscow. Order a laptop at a price of 19,990 rubles in the online store. Delivery is free. 2 year warranty. "
“How to properly grow aloe at home. Gardener magazine shares the secrets of growing an aloe plant at home.»

Length no more than 140 characters. In pure html, it would look like this:

Keywords

The Meta Keywords tag is a set of keywords by which a page is promoted. However, today this attribute is already optional and optional, so in the "golden age" of SEO, it was overused and ignored by search engines. If you all decided to fill in keywords, it is better to do this by simply listing words in the initial form without commas:

"Buy a laptop in Moscow order price cost ruble online store catalog delivery guarantee"

Any length, but you should not be too zealous. In html, it is correctly written like this:

You can parse the competitors' meta tags in just a couple of clicks - using a parser.

Technical meta tags

Expires - the expiration date of the document.
Pragma - a ban on the use of cached data, information must be loaded from the server.
Content-Type - content type and encoding.
Content-language - language of the page / site.
Cache-Control - Sets whether the document is cached or not, and if so, how.
Robots - responsible for indexing individual pages.
document-state - indexing frequency.

The absence of meta tags can negatively affect the display, indexing and ranking of pages.

How to add meta tags to CMS

Most often, various CMS are used to manage content on the site, and some of them require the installation of additional modules and plugins in order to set meta tags. To register meta tags on the CMS you need:

Though Wix and is not a CMS - it is just a constructor, here you can also make a meta description of the site and keywords that contain information about the site. For each page, when you click on three dots, a menu pops up where you can go to the SEO section and set the necessary parameters.

But if you are serious about promoting your site in search engines, it is better not to use Wix and choose, for example, WordPress.

Checking meta tags online + analysis

To check meta tags on your own website or to analyze meta descriptions from competitors, you can use services that quickly and online show the necessary information.

Here are some of these services:

http://seo-inf.ru/tools/view-metatags/
http://www.prcy-info.ru/index.php/meta-tags-check
https: // site / prizyv-k-dejstviyu-v-reklame /

You no longer need to use meta keywords and description tags. That in order to get a high place in the natural search results, unique content and a well-written title are enough. It is quite possible that for certain key phrases this is enough, but it does not mean that you should ignore the keywords and description meta tags completely!

In fact, the title of the page and the meta description (description) are often used by search engines to form a snippet that appears whenever your pages appear in natural search results. Accordingly, the content contained in these meta tags plays an important role in attracting visitors from search results.

Based on the above, I will try to formulate the basic concepts of optimizing meta tags for search results.

Meta tags should be filled as completely as possible

The first step to properly optimizing meta tags is to use the optimal number of characters when filling. Think carefully about the title and description of your page that you include in the meta tags. This, one might say, is the face of your site and it directly depends on it whether new users will show interest in your resource, since they are faced with exactly this information in a fragment (snippet) of your site in the search results. Generally, when filling out meta tags, you should consider the following restrictions on the number of characters in each of the meta tags:

Page title (title) - 70 characters
Meta description - 160 characters
Meta keywords - no more than 10 key phrases separated by commas (I use no more than two)

Meta tags should include targeted keywords and phrases naturally

Now that we know about symbolic restrictions when filling in meta tags, we need to pay special attention to how to properly include target phrases and keywords. It has long been clear to everyone that the practice of filling meta tags with keywords has long been unsuccessful, but this does not mean at all that this can be neglected. It just means that you have to be more thoughtful when filling out the keywords meta tag. List there only the promoted keywords of this page, and not from the whole site.

When creating a meta title tag (page title), consider including the main keyword for that page and your brand name, separated by "|" or “::”. It is not necessary to fill the title, as many do, with keywords.

Following this formula, let's look at an example of the correct meta title tag for an About Us page:

Correct title

«About us | Roza Vetrov web studio - website development and SEO promotion "

And a bad example of the same page:

Incorrect title

"About us - web studio, website development, SEO promotion"

Although both examples of the meta title tag fit within 70 characters, in my opinion the first version is a more convincing option, which uses possible target keywords in a natural way.

The same goes for your description meta. Include the same target phrases and keywords in this meta tag area. This will give you an extra bonus, which will make your phrases stand out. bold in natural search results. Provided that the user enters the exact wording of your keyword into the search. It is clear that you want to include as many keywords as possible in the descriptions, you should not do this, I recommend sticking to one or two phrases to prevent possible bans for over-optimization.

Finally, when it comes to the meta (keywords) tag of keywords, the recommendations are mixed. While adding content to this area will not help your site rank higher in SERPs, keywords here can play a role in how well your site ranks on less reputable search engines than Google or Yandex.

Meta tags (description) descriptions should include a call to action

Now the fun begins ...

Remember, your meta title and description tags aren't just fields you fill out for SEO purposes. Search engines very often use them to form your snippet in natural search results. This means that they should be compiled in the most attractive and informative way!

An example of a snippet for the query "Website Promotion":

Correct description

« Web studio Rosa Vetrov carries out website promotion - a full range of work on website promotion in search engines "

Incorrect description

« That is why all companies that need website promotion should pay attention to adapting their resource for visiting ... "

I guess I don’t even have to ask which of these articles you prefer to read, right?

The conclusion suggests itself, write good meta descriptions using copywriting principles. It may take longer, but the reward will be more clicks, more natural search traffic to your site, and possibly higher SERPs.

If you're not already an expert copywriter, the following guidelines should be considered when it comes to creating your meta title tags and meta descriptions:

Add a call to action . Most people follow the links subconsciously, taking note of the actions you asked for. Possible calls to action for your meta description could include the phrases “Find out how”, “Find out more about,” “Click here,” or other variations.
Use a keyword . The first indicator of meta description, by itself, does not provide an advantage. It should be used in conjunction with a phrase that includes the keyword of your page and which will be a real reason to click on the link to read the full article.
Write your own meta tags for yourself . After you've come up with and compiled a few possible meta tags, ask yourself, "Would I follow a link based on this information?" If your meta tags aren't convincing yet, rewrite them until you come up with something more seductive.

Remember, you can always change the content of your meta tags by changing the information stored in them. If you've noticed a surge in search traffic since the change was made, it's very possible that you've ended up on a winning combination of meta tags.

Meta tags can be improved by using structured data (micro-markup)

And the last thing you can do to improve the site's snippet in search results is to use micro-markup in the text of the page, which allows you to add “bold” fragments to the snippet.

Essentially, bold snippets strengthen your site's ranking by providing additional information beyond your title and description meta tags. This additional information may include a picture, the number of people following you on Google+. There are also microdata and other industry data elements, such as recipes, books, films, cars, etc.

I have already mentioned the creation of such snippets in my posts about and

The following example (from the search query "recipe for potato soup") shows the difference between web pages with and without microdata:

As you might expect, users will be more willing to click on a link with a more informative snippet, and search engines will rank a site with this markup higher. Therefore, in the next article I will explain in detail how to use microdata when creating site pages.

In this article, we will tell you the basics and rules using examples of filling in the meta tags of website pages: title, description, keywords and we will figure out the formation of snippets in Search Engines.

Deciphering meta tags for better comprehension:
Meta tag "title" - The title of the page.
Meta tag "description" - Description of the page.
Meta tag "keywords" - Key words of the page.

To get started with meta tags, you need to remember 10 rules:
1 - Each page must have its own unique title.
2 - Each page must have its own unique description.
3 - Each page should have its own relevant keywords.
4 - The length of the title, should not exceed 100 characters, optimally 60-70 characters.
5 - The length of the description should not exceed 200 characters, optimally 160 characters.
6 - The number of keywords should not exceed 5 per page.
7 - Can't copy keywords to description or title.
8 - You cannot make a field for keywords from the description.
9 - You cannot make a field for keywords from the title.
10 - Do not get carried away by repeating title, description, keywords on the pages of the site.

Using this article as an example, we will tell you how to style the title, description, keywords for this page.

An example of how the "keywords" meta tag should look for this page:

In this article, we will not consider how and where to select keywords, but we will learn how to correctly fill in the value of the keywords meta tag.

Correct filling of keywords:

Incorrect filling of keywords:

Keywords tips:
1 - There must be a punctuation mark after the keyword.
2 - There must be one space after the punctuation mark.
3 - In keywords it is impossible (not recommended) to use symbols /. \<>@_%#" etc.
4 - Choose exactly those keywords that are directly related to your site.
5 - For commercial sites, select keywords with "buy", "buy", "purchase", "cost", "price" and the like.
6 - Choose your keywords for each page.
7 - All keywords should be in lower case.

An example of how the "description" meta tag should look like for a given page:

Correct filling of the description:

Incorrect description:

Advice:
1 - The text in the description should be for people.
2 - You can't just list keywords in the description.
3 - In the description, you need to describe the page of the site.
4 - Describe your page.
5 - Write a unique description for each page.
6 - Do not duplicate and do not make the description formulaic.
7 - The description affects the CTR of the site (the description is like a bait, write tempting and the potential client will not pass by).

An example of how the "title" meta tag should look for this page:

Correct title filling:
The semantic core for the site, the correct filling of the title, description, keywords tags with examples

Incorrect title filling:
semantic core for the site, correct title, selection of keywords, filling in tags, semantic core

- = site.com = -semantic core | seo services, buy a website and the best seo forum

The semantic core of title description keywords and more

Advice:
1 - Write your own title for each page.
2 - Do not duplicate or make the title template.
3 - Influence affects the CTR of the site (it is your title that shows the link to the page in the search engines).
4 - Do not overuse keywords in the title.
5 - Try to write in understandable language for humans, not robots

Separate advice:
Use HF (high frequency queries) for the home page.
Use midrange (average frequency queries) for sections, categories.
Use low frequencies (low frequency queries) for news, announcements and the like.

Advice for generating a snippet in a search engine:
Forming a snippet in Yasha:

2) Snippet content = H1 content (article title) + a piece of text relevant to the request
ONLY THE LAST PART THERE IS NO POSSIBILITY TO INFLUENCE

Google is a little easier.
Forming a snippet in Google:
1) Snippet Title = Page Title
2) Snippet content = Description content corresponding to the content of the article

This is an example of a page containing all the necessary information for the search engines to form a snippet convenient for you.

based on materials