Search engines like Google utilize a website’s meta tags to understand essential information about the webpage. Such information helps with ranking purposes and displaying snippets in search results.
In 2020, about 25.02% of top-ranking web pages didn’t have a meta description. This figure suggests that meta tags aren’t the only element that helps a website’s ranking. Web designers and search engine optimization (SEO) specialists should consider combining meta tags with other SEO elements like keywords, backlinks, and content.
Meta tags can play an essential function in SEO. Read this article to learn more about how SEO can help your organization’s digital marketing campaign.
What is the function of meta tags? How do you use them to optimize your web pages? What are the best practices when using meta tags? What are the various meta tags, and how essential are they for SEO?
This article explains the purpose of meta tags and the functions and importance of each meta tag type. It also expounds on the best practices to help you use meta tags and optimize your web pages.
The Different Meta Tag Types and What They Do
There are at least four meta tag types web designers and SEO specialists use:
Title Tags
Title tags indicate the web page’s name and tell search engines what title to display on the search engine results page (SERP). You can use a simplified phrase or the entire headline on a specific web page as your title.
Search engine crawlers or bots go through your web page’s title tag to easily identify, read, classify, and rank your content. One example of a title tag format is:
<title>Top SEO Keywords of 2022</title>
The title tag is the most important among the different meta tags because it’s what search engines and people using the internet see. In other words, title tags are among your first web page elements that must capture a searcher’s attention.
Meta Descriptions
A meta description summarizes the web page’s content. It appears below the title tag on the SERP (search engine results page). Meta descriptions have the following format:
<meta name=“description” content=“This list compiles the top 100 SEO terms based on search volume for 2022”/>
Google doesn’t include meta descriptions in the rankings algorithm. However, they’re still included as snippets (the text appearing below the title) in Google’s search results to improve search accessibility.
Think of meta descriptions as a way to increase your CTR (click-through rate). CTR is the number of times a user clicks your ad divided by the number of times your ad appears.
Viewport Meta Tags
The viewport is the web page’s visible area that a user sees, depending on what device the user views your content. Two options are a laptop (bigger screen) or a mobile device (smaller screen).
The format for viewport meta tags is as follows:
<meta name=“viewport” content=“width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0”>
Some web pages that appear correctly on a desktop screen may become difficult to read on a mobile device. In this case, visitors will likely leave your website if it’s inaccessible on a mobile phone because it’s optimized for the desktop version only.
When this situation happens, your site’s bounce rate can increase and adversely affect your search rankings. Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors entering and leaving your website without visiting your other pages.
Robots Meta Tags
The robots’ meta tag is a parameter placed within the HTML (HyperText Markup Language) code to provide instructions on whether you prefer search engine bots to crawl and index parts of your website or completely ignore a specific web page.
The format for this tag is:
<meta name=“robots” content=“noindex”/>
What Are Meta Tags?
Meta tags contain a web page’s information that partially influences how search engines understand a website. Put another way, meta tags can help improve a website’s visibility in search engine results.
Web designers place meta tags into the HTML code to provide search engines with additional information about a specific page. Aside from making the website’s title and description appear in the search results, meta tags help rank content or pages.
Meta Tags and SEO: Using Meta Tags to Optimize Your Web Pages
To optimize your web pages using meta tags to help with your SEO campaign, consider the following tips:
- For title tags, these recommendations can improve page titles:
- Add a title tag for each page.
- Keep your headlines short, typically under 60 characters.
- Avoid vague or generic titles like “Home” for the homepage.
- Use title or sentence case.
- Include relevant target keywords when applicable.
- Avoid using clickbait titles.
- Create unique title tags for each page on your website.
- For meta descriptions, consider the following best practices:
- Keep the length below 160 characters.
- Create summaries that are unique for each page.
- Avoid duplicate meta descriptions.
- Use sentence case.
- Be brief and accurate.
- Include relevant keywords only when they make sense.
- For viewport meta tags, ensure each page contains such tags to make your website mobile-friendly and enhance user experience.
- Use “noindex” or “nofollow” for the robots meta tags to tell the search engine bots not to crawl on that page. These tags can help prevent duplicate content penalties.
Contact an SEO expert or digital marketing specialist to learn more about meta tags and how you can use these tags to improve your SEO campaign for your website.
Reference
- 63 SEO Statistics
