What are meta tags and are they important for SEO?
Meta tags may have come up when you were developing your website. So what precisely are meta tags and why are they significant? We’ll go into the realm of meta tags in this post and examine what they are and how they function.
Meta tags are tidbits of HTML code that educate search engines and website visitors about a web page. While they are present in the web page’s code, these tags are not visible on the page itself. Meta tags may affect how a website appears in search engine results (SERPs).
Types of Meta Tags
- Title tag – This tag specifies the title of a web page and appears in the SERP as the clickable headline for a search result. The title tag should be descriptive and contain keywords relevant to the page’s content.
- Description tag – This tag provides a brief description of the page’s content and appears under the title tag in the SERP. The description tag should be compelling and give users a reason to click through to the page.
- Keywords tag – This tag used to be important for SEO but has since become less significant. It lists the main keywords for the page, separated by commas.
- Robots tag – This tag specifies how search engines should crawl and index the page. For example, the “noindex” directive tells search engines not to index the page, while the “nofollow” directive tells search engines not to follow any links on the page.
- Canonical tag – This tag is used to prevent duplicate content issues by indicating the preferred version of a web page when there are multiple versions of the same content.
While meta tags are not the only factor that search engines use to rank web pages, they can play a significant role in SEO. By including relevant and descriptive meta tags on your web pages, you can help search engines understand what your pages are about and improve their visibility in the SERPs.
But not all tags are useful. For example one of Google’s directives was to move away from using keywords meta tags. Here is an article on some of the meta tags that still matter today.
Use an SEO Plugin to Manage Semantic Tags
Plugins make it easier to manage tagging around your site. Especially with the description tag. Use a plugin like Yeost SEO if you are on WordPress.
Proper tagging also involves adhering to schema.org guidelines. Google’s implementation of schema is called structured data and Rich Snippets.
In Conclusion
Meta tags are a vital component of website optimization. They provide essential information about a web page to search engines and website visitors and can influence how a page appears in the SERPs. If you are building a website, make sure to include relevant and descriptive meta tags on your pages to improve their visibility and performance.
