Tips for Creating Your Meta Keywords and Meta Description

If you look at the source code of sites that launched not too long ago that quickly rose in popularity, you will notice that there is no sign of meta keywords or a meta description. Many Internet marketers believe that search engines no longer rely on these tags. However, since meta tags haven't been entirely depreciated, it doesn’t hurt to use these tags. In fact, meta keywords tags can serve as a hidden reference for keywords that you should use in all of the pages on your site.

Creating Good Meta Keywords

The easiest way to come up with good meta keywords is to head to a competitor’s website in the same niche as your website and check the site’s ranking if it is good. Then check the site’s source code to find keywords that you can apply to your site. Make sure you examine each keyword phrase before copying. If the keywords are relevant to your site, try to make it a little bit unique by rearranging the order of these keywords.

If you want to be a bit more unique, use a thesaurus to come up with synonyms. Then modify them by adding singular and plural versions as well as hyphenated and non-hyphenated if applicable. Be sure to come up with geo-specific words too if you are targeting local audiences.

Creating a Good Meta Description

Webmasters and Internet marketers in the past exploited the meta description tag by placing various keywords in it. This technique simply no longer works, so it is best to focus on encouraging people to click on the link. Remember, even if your site is properly optimized and you have secured a good position in the search results, your traffic will only spike up if people click the link to your site and not any other site that shows up on the same search results page. Therefore, the meta description has to stand out amongst the other descriptions and you are limited to only 155 characters.

A good trick is to come up with as many creative descriptions as you can. Then evaluate each one and see if it adapts to the AIDA or “Attention Interest Desire Action” model. With such a tight character limit, you can focus on the “Attention” and “Interest” bits so people will be encouraged to click on the link to see more information. Avoid phrases like “Click here!” because it is a waste of characters, especially since it is possible to come up with an attractive statement that will encourage people to click on your link anyway. Twitter is a good source of ideas, since tweets are limited to a small number of characters as well.