Amped Media

In our first post we will be discussing the importance of meta tags and how they can help increase your search engine ranking and usability.

Meta tags consist of a title, description, and keywords. Meta tags are outlined within the source code on each page of your website. Meta tags should be relative to the content that is on the page. Each page of your website should have a different set of meta tags referring to what the page is about.

Here are the meta tags for some of the pages of my website (http://www.ampedmedia.net/) so that you may setup your meta tags in the same manner:

Home Page (http://www.ampedmedia.net/)
Title: Amped Media - Home :: Rockland Website and Computer Services
Description: Amped Media provides quality yet affordable website and computer services for business owners and individuals. Located in Nyack, NY, we insure a user-friendly, money and time saving, guided experience for all of our clients, whether you are looking to take your business online or need help with your computer.
Keywords: amped media, rockland, nyack, ny, website services, computer services, one stop shop, michael khekoian, ampedmedia

Website Services Page (http://www.ampedmedia.net/website-services.html)
Title: Amped Media - Website Services :: Rockland Domains, Hosting, Design, Development, Marketing, Support
Description: A one stop shop for quality yet affordable website services. Whether you are starting a new business, have been around for years, or currently have a website, see why it is important to establish an optimized and user-friendly identity on the Internet. Its not a website, unless its AMPED!
Keywords: amped media, rockland, nyack, website domains, website hosting, graphic design, website development, internet marketing, website support, website services

Contact Page (http://www.ampedmedia.net/contact.html)
Title: Amped Media - Contact :: Rockland Website and Computer Services Contact Information
Description: Is your business showing up on search engines when potential clients are looking for you? Tired of that annoying computer virus slowing down your productivity? Contact us today and we will be sure to get back to you within 24 hours!
Keywords: amped media, amped media contact, contact information, michael khekoian

Notice that the meta tags for the home page refer to the entire website, while the meta tags for the contact page are specific to the contact information. This helps direct visitors to the page they are searching for; for instance, if a visitor searches for "amped media contact", the search engine results will display the contact page rather then the home page.

The title for my home page (http://www.ampedmedia.net/) is "Amped Media - Home :: Rockland Website and Computer Services" which outlines the name of my business (Amped Media), the general geographic of where I do business (Rockland), and the services I provide (Website and Computer Services). It is a general overview of the entire website considering that it is the home page.

Your title can be anywhere from 40 to 120 characters and should be consistent across every page of your website, meaning that it should have the same prefix such as the name of your business and the page you are on before the rest of the title.

The description is displayed underneath the title in search engine results. It is a more detailed explanation of the title further describing what the page is about. Your description can be anywhere from 1 to 3 sentences.

The keywords, although hidden, are the primary terms you want to rank for in search engine results relative to the content that is on the page. You can have anywhere from 10 to 30 keywords per page. Keywords should be lowercase, seperated by commas, and as far as singular and plural terms are concerned, you can use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) to see which term is searched for more often.