Intro
Meta tags are one of the most important aspects of on-page SEO. These tags provide search engines with information about your website, which in turn helps them index your site properly and improve your ranking. In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about meta tags and how to use them to optimize your website for better SEO.
What are Meta Tags?
Meta tags are short snippets of text that describe a page’s content. They are used by search engines to help index and rank a website. Meta tags can be used to provide information about the author, keywords, descriptions, and other relevant details.
Meta tags are snippets of text that describe a page’s content. They appear in the HTML code of a webpage and help search engines understand what the page is about. There are different types of meta tags, but the two most important for SEO purposes are the title tag and meta description tag.
The title tag is the text that appears in the search engine results when someone searches for a keyword or phrase that’s related to your page. The meta description tag is the text that appears underneath the title in the search engine results. It summarizes the page’s content and tells searchers what they can expect to find on your website.
Both the title and meta description tags should be Unique – In other words, don’t use the same title or meta description across multiple pages on your website. Each page should have its own unique title and meta description that accurately reflects its content.
accurately reflects its content. Relevant – The title and meta description should be relevant to the theme of the page. For example, if you’re writing a blog post about “How to Choose the Right SEO Company,” then your title tag might be something like “Choosing an SEO Company: 7 Key Factors to Consider.”
Concise – Keep your title tags to 50 characters or less, and your meta descriptions to 155 characters or less. If you go too long, search engines will cut off your text with ellipses (…).
Types of Meta Tags
In addition to the title tag and meta description tag, there are other types of meta tags that can help improve your website’s SEO:
- Meta keywords tag – This type of tag was once used by search engines to help index websites, but it’s no longer supported by Google and other major search engines.
- Meta robots tag – This type of tag tells search engine crawlers whether they should index a page and follow its links or ignore it altogether. The vast majority of websites use an “Index/Follow” setting, which allows their pages to be indexed by search engines and followed by crawlers.
- Rel canonical tag – This type of tag is used to avoid duplicate content penalties from search engines by telling them which version of a URL is the original (or “canonical”). For example, if you have a blog post that can be accessed at both www.example.com/blog-post and www.example2/blog-post2, you would use a rel canonical tag on www.example2/blog-post2 that points to www .example .com/blog-post. That way, only www .example .com /blog-post would get indexed by search engines, avoiding any duplicate content issues.
Why are Meta Tags Important?
Meta tags are important because they give search engines an idea of what your website is about. This helps them properly index your site and determine where it should rank in the search results. If you don’t have proper meta tags, your website may not be properly indexed, which could result in lower rankings or even no rankings at all.
How to Use Meta Tags
There are two types of meta tags: those that go in the <head> section of your code, and those that go in the <body> section. The <head> section is where most of the important meta tags go. This includes the title tag, meta description tag, keyword tag, and robot tag. The <body> section is where you’ll find the rest of the meta tags such as the alt tag and link rel-tag.
The title tag is perhaps the most important meta tag because it tells search engines what your website is about. The title should be 50-60 characters long and include your main keyword. The meta description tag is also important because it gives searchers a brief overview of what your website is about. The meta description should be 150-160 characters long and include your main keyword as well.
The keyword tag is used to tell search engines which keywords are relevant to your website. You should include 5-10 keywords here that are relevant to your business or website topic. Finally, the robot tag tells search engines whether they should index your website or not. You can use this tag to prevent certain pages from being indexed (such as pages that contain duplicate content).
Summary
Meta tags play a vital role in on-page SEO. These tags provide search engines with information about your website so they can properly index it and determine where it should rank in the search results pages. While there are many different types of meta tags, some of the most important ones include the title tag, meta description tag, keyword tag, and robot tag. By including these tags on your website and using them correctly, you can dramatically improve your chances of ranking high in the SERPs.
