What Are Meta Tags and Why are they Important For SEO

  • Rajeev Rajagopal

An organic seo company can help to create and optimize meta tags, which is important to increase your SERP ranking.

Meta tags are essential for SEO as they explain to search engines what a page is about. Meta tags can be considered the first impression for all search engines. Search engines can learn more about a website page using meta tags, which are similar to HTML tags. Websites without meta tags lose out on a significant chance to rank in search results. So, reach out to reputable organic seo company to create and optimize meta tags, and raise your SERP ranking.

HTML tags that describe the content of your page to search engines and website visitors are called meta tags. Only the page's source code contains the Meta tags, which anyone may view by pressing the Ctrl+U keyboard shortcut. High-quality meta tags are necessary for successful digital marketing and technical SEO even though search engines do not use them as a ranking factor. Search engine users will interpret your meta title and meta description as the page title and the summary of its contents when your pages appear in search results. Searchers will decide whether or not to navigate to your page based on the poignancy of this metadata. Effective meta tags can boost conversions, reduce bounce rates by making the goal of pages clear, improve on-page SEO, and provide a vetting system for any duplicate content on your site.

Important Meta tags for SEO

Title tag: The Title tag is the first HTML element that describes your website to both users and search engines. All browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and others, support the title element.

Tips to write title tag

• Include your site's title tag in the relevant area. According to Google, the title tag should be between 55 and 60 characters in length.
• Optimizing title tags is crucial for both users and search engines.
• Your title tag should include "modifiers." (How to |The current year | Review |Best | Tips | Top |Find | Buy | Easy).
• Incorporate long-tail keywords into title tags.
• Start your title tag with the primary keyword you're aiming for.
• Never stuff keywords in title tags.
• All pages should have a unique title tag

Meta description: Meta Description is an HTML element that provides a summary of your web page. The Meta description is often displayed in search results underneath your Title tag. Despite the fact that Google does not utilise the Meta description as a ranking indication, the fact that it appears in search results has a significant impact on your page CTR. Google lengthened the snippets in search results in December 2017. After extending search results snippets in December, Google has now acknowledged that it has shortened them. On desktop, the description snippet field's average length has decreased from 300+ characters to roughly 160 characters. The average number of characters for mobile search result snippets is now 130.

Tips to write meta description tag

• Don't focus on the character count because Google may extract the Meta description text from your content based on a user's search.
• Avoid using repeated Meta descriptions.
• Include a call to action (CTA) in each of your descriptions, such as "Apply now," "Check out," or "Contact us today." Take a look at these CTA terms for marketing efforts.
• Include in the descriptions your targeted keywords.
• strategically offer remedies for an issue
• By providing targeted and pertinent material, you may write for your audience and get them to click.
• Include any current promotions or discounts Write your meta descriptions with empathy

Canonical Tag: If you have a single page URL that shares content with other multiple page URLs, you should use the Canonical tag. It is an HTML link element with the "rel=canonical" attribute. By using the Canonical tag in the code we are informing search engines that this URL is the primary page and preventing them from indexing other duplicate page URLs.

A canonical tag Syntax is

<link rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/" />

Alternative tag: Since search engines cannot read photos, you must add appropriate Alt text to the images in order for the search engine to take them into consideration.

Syntax for Alt Text is

<img src=”http://example.com/xyz.jpg” alt=”xyz” />

Tips to write alt tags

• Every image must have descriptive filenames.
• Alt text must be succinct, precise, and to the point.
• Always utilise authentic, appropriate imagery, as this is a crucial stage for success.
• Make a sitemap for images.
• In the alt text, use 50–55 characters (up to 16 words).
• For speedier page loading, use a file size that is as small as possible without sacrificing quality.

Robot meta tags: Search engines are instructed to either index or not index your website using the robots meta tag.

For search engine crawlers, the tag has four main values:

FOLLOW - All of the links on that page will be followed by the search engine crawler.

INDEX- Crawlers from search engines will fully index the webpage.

NOFOLLOW - The webpage and any links on it will NOT be followed by the search engine crawler.

NO INDEX- The search engine crawler won't index the page.

The Robots Meta tag syntax:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, nofollow”> - Means not to index or not to follow this web page.

<meta name=”robots” content=”index, follow”> - Means index and follow this web page.

Social media tags:

Open graph tags: The goal of Open Graph Meta tags is to encourage integration between the website URLs that you posted on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google.

Here is a sample of how Open Graph tags look like in standard HTML:

<meta property="og:type" content="article" />
<meta property="og:title" content="TITLE OF YOUR POST OR PAGE" />
<meta property="og:description" content="DESCRIPTION OF PAGE CONTENT" />
<meta property="og:image" content="LINK TO THE IMAGE FILE" />
<meta property="og:url" content="PERMALINK" />
<meta property="og:site_name" content="SITE NAME" />

Twitter cards: Similar to Open Graph, Twitter cards operate by adding these unique Meta tags just for Twitter. When your page is shared on Twitter, these tags will improve how it appears.

Here is a sample of how a Twitter card looks like in standard HTML:

<meta name="twitter:title" content="TITLE OF POST OR PAGE">
<meta name="twitter:description" content="DESCRIPTION OF PAGE CONTENT">
<meta name="twitter:image" content="LINK TO IMAGE">
<meta name="twitter:site" content="@USERNAME">
<meta name="twitter:creator" content="@USERNAME">

Header tags: A Header tag is used to create headings, and by using it, we may change the font.

With H1 being the highest (or most important) level and H6 being the least, the heading elements are H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6.

Responsive design tags:The responsive design meta tag, often known as the viewport meta element, is the last significant meta tag. Web designers can control how a page scales and appears on any device by using viewport meta elements. This viewport element is included in the head section of your web page.

Syntax:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1">

To improve your on-page results, you should analyse how you employ meta tags for SEO. As long as you use the 8 SEO meta tags in this post properly, they will improve your ranking. Use meta tags to help Google and human visitors understand the purpose of your website. You'll offer more value if you employ meta tags in your SEO strategy more frequently. Partner with an organic SEO company to post your meta tags and optimize them so that you can improve your ranking and drive more traffic.