15/05/2012
Optimize Your Title and Meta Tags
HTML titles and meta tags should be different on every page of your website if you wish for most search engines to store and list them in the search results. Us SEO Expert's have experimented with these two pieces of code to help us reach an accepted conclusion about how best to use them and what happens when you optimize them.
The meta "keywords" tag won't be discussed in to much detail here, since Google has announced that they do not use the meta keywords tag in their ranking criteria. Because Google has 64 percent market share in search, that should be enough to convince you to not spend a lot of time on this attribute.
Optimizing Your Homepage Title
There are different theories about how long your homepage title should be. Since Google only displays the first 66 or so characters (with spaces), my Top 10 SEO tips for the title on anything other than the homepage would be to keep the title under 66 characters and relevant to the content on the page. However, some (including myself) argue that the value of the homepage title may warrant additional search term inclusion. Let's take a look at Amazon and Ebay homepage titles:
eBay - New & used electronics, cars, apparel, collectibles, sporting goods & more at low prices
Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more
Local SEO Services, Local Search Engine Optimization, Mobile Search, Online Advertising for Local Businesses | LocalSplash.com
Buy.com - Computers, Electronics, Digital Cameras, Books, DVDs, Music, Games, Software, Toys, Sports
Optimizing Your Homepage Meta Description
Same best practice applies here. Get those top terms into a description that isn't spammy and is a clear indicator of what your website is about. Below are the meta descriptions from eBay and Amazon.
Buy and sell electronics, cars, clothing, apparel, collectibles, sporting goods, digital cameras, and everything else on eBay, the world's online marketplace. Sign up and begin to buy and sell - auction or buy it now - almost anything on eBay.com.
Online shopping from the earth's biggest selection of books, magazines, music, DVDs, videos, electronics, computers, software, apparel & accessories, shoes, jewelry, tools & hardware, housewares, furniture, sporting goods, beauty & personal care, broadband & dsl, gourmet food & just about anything else.
The rule of thumb here is to get your most important keywords into your homepage title and meta description