How do I Choose the Best Meta Tag Analyzer?

Choosing the best meta tag analyzer depends on the scale of your website, the price you are willing to spend for a program and how much search engine optimization work you want to do with your website. These website analytic tools can range from being free to costing hundreds of dollars. Some even have special features, such as displaying how relevant your content is to your meta tags. Meta tag analyzers help in indexing web content by ensuring your content does not look like spam to search engines.

Scale is the first consideration. Some meta tag analyzer programs are made to scan only one page at a time, while others can scan a number of pages or an entire website in one sweep. A small website, with fewer than 10 pages, won’t benefit much from a large meta tag analyzer. Larger websites with hundreds of pages will need a large-scale meta tag analyzer, because it can take hours to go through every page individually.

Special features help distinguish good meta tag analyzer programs from great ones. A basic analyzer will search your website and tell you the HTML tags and meta tags used in the page. This is exactly how a search engine spider sees your website.

Other meta tag analyzers will search for the relevance of the keywords based on the content and whether the meta tags are properly optimized for search engine optimization. Some analyzers will also search for keyword relevancy, which helps boost search engine ranks. Another special feature is determining whether there are errors in the meta tag spelling or title, which can affect rankings.

Another consideration is the deployment of the meta tag analyzer. Some come as hypertext preprocessor (PHP) scripts that have to be installed on your server. Others are web-based and used through a website, or come packed as a program that is opened through the desktop. Depending on your experience, some of these versions may be harder to use than others.

Effectiveness is another consideration that can sometimes be tested before purchasing the meta tag analyzer. Most providers will have a free version available that analyzes one page. Make a page and manually analyze it for keywords and meta tags, then see if the analyzer picks up the same meta elements that you list. If not, then the effectiveness may be questionable.

Price is usually directly correlated with the size and features. Larger programs that sweep an entire website with a range of features are typically more expensive. Compare the size, deployment and features of the program with its price, and see which one offers the best value.