Exploring the Joomla Meta Tags

This is the first part of a series of blog posts exploring Joomla meta tags.
In this first post I'll look at what meta tags are and what they should be used for.
Future posts in the series will examine how to set up the meta tags by using the Joomla core, and with third-party SEF extensions.

What Are Meta Tags?

Meta tags are tags, or meta elements, that (mostly) contain information about the website or page which is not shown directly to the user.
This is what Wikipedia tells us about Meta Elements:

Meta elements are HTML or XHTML elements used to provide structured metadata about a Web page. Such elements must be placed as tags in the head section of an HTML or XHTML document. Meta elements can be used to specify page description, keywords and any other metadata not provided through the other head elements and attributes.
The meta element has four valid attributes: content, http-equiv, name and scheme. Of these, only content is a required attribute.

What Meta Tags Should I Use?

There are a lot of meta tags available, but I will focus on those I know will give you something back in search engine visibility. Or that provide an enhanced user experience.

Recent discoveries by myself and my colleagues indicate that less is more when it comes to meta tags and other elements of your web pages. Removing unnecessary code from your HTML will increase the amount of unique content in each of your pages. This is beneficial for SEO, as Google and the other search engines look for unique, relevant content. Thus, removing unnecessary meta elements from your pages is a good thing.
Removing whitespace from your HTML can also increase your chances of ranking higher in the search engines. Just take a look at the source code of the Google.com front page..
This means you should remove anything not 100% related to improving your site search engine visibility.

TITLE

The most important meta element is the TITLE tag. Not a META tag per se, it's often regarded as one. For the purpose of this post, I will include the title tag when talking about meta tags in general.

The

Google regards the TITLE tag as very important. I guess this is partly because of the prominent position the TITLE gets in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). A good title will contain the targeted keyword(s) or phrase(s). It will also be selling your page to the reader. This, in turn, makes the user click the link to read the rest of the article.

TITLE Tip:If you're selling products, include the price in the TITLE tag. This way, you pre-qualify the customer before they arrive at your site, increasing the change that they buy from you.

Description

The Description tag is also very important. A well formed description tag will more often than not be used as the descriptive text in the SERPs. Thus, it should contain your targeted keyword(s) or phrase(s) and sell your page effectively.

The tag may look like this:

The Description should not be more than 150 characters long. By keeping it this short, the full text will show in the SERPs. If you're really into it, you can craft the length of your words and sentences in such a way as to control where the line breaks when showing in the Google Search Engine Result page. That's actually quite neat.

Remember that the description tag is the actual sales copy the user will read before deciding to click your link or not. Make sure the copy is correct, contains your keywords and is enthusiastically selling your product or service. At least, it should be a clear and concise excerpt on what to find on the page.

It's very important to include your keywords in the description. The keywords will be bolded in the search results, making the actual keyword stand out to the user. Preferrably the keyword has been used at least two times in the description.

Keywords

Meta keywords are no longer important. Where they ever?
Matt Cutts, the Google guru, recently did a definite post on the subject. He concluded the keywords tag is not used by Google, and will most likely not be used in the future. Not exactly breaking news, but it's nevertheless good to get the information directly from the source.
There's only one reason to use the keywords meta tag field in Joomla. If you use the related articles tag or a cloud tag, these tags use the keywords meta tag field.

Author

I don't see a reason to use this tag at all. It has no positive effect on SEO.

Robots meta tag

Generator

The default Joomla generator tag is, in my opinion, not important at all. Also, it is one more thing giving away the fact that your site is made in Joomla. Removing the generator tag alone is not enough to hide that the site is built with Joomla, but it's a good start.

Next Post: How to Set Up Meta Tags Correctly in Joomla

Now you know more about the meta tags used in Joomla. In my next post, I will look at how you can set up meta tags correctly in the Joomla administration.
I will also look at some useful extensions that improve on how the Joomla core handles meta tags.