What are Meta Tags in SEO?
Let’s start this article by meta tags definition basically What are Meta Tags?
Well, Meta Tags are short text descriptions that explains (or give a brief overview of) what the web page is about.
In the phrase Meta Tags, Meta means “Meta Data”, which is a kind of data that is provided through Tags.
These tags are defined in the HTML of the webpage usually inside the head tags and not visible at the frontend.
Meta Tags helps search engines to get an overview of what the webpage is about.
To find out whether a web page is using any meta tags, you can simply open the page source by right clicking on it and then select “View Page Source”.
Now, press CTRL (or CMD) + F, and then search for <meta.
In this article, we are going to deep dive into knowing the seo meta tags, meta tags example and how to use them.
Importance of Meta Tags in SEO
One important question you may have, Does Meta Tags really help in improving a web page search engine ranking?
Well, not all meta tags help in improving the search engine ranking but few of them really do.
And In this article, we are going to talk about these meta tags only that help improving the search engine ranking.
SEO Meta Tags Types
While there are plenty of Meta Tags types available on the Internet, few of them are really helpful for improving the search engine ranking.
Below, I am sharing with you the list of Meta Tags that helps in getting organic ranking.
Title Tag
When you create a webpage, it’s obvious that you give that webpage a title.
But, you can also define this title inside the meta tag to help search engines easily identify what the page is about.
These tags are called Title Tag and are the most important meta tags in SEO. That’s because Title Tags are directly shown on the SERP.
Inside the title you can use your primary keyword and secondary keywords for improving the chances to get ranking for your desired keyword.
Now, since it is the most important meta tag in SEO, it has some limitations.
In SEO, the title of a webpage has limited length to show in SERP.
Most SEO bibles say the meta title to show under 55-60 characters, but as per my experience, you can play the title till 70 characters. Because this way you let the search engine decide which phrase to pick (and show) as per the user’s query (aka keyword entry).
So, to create the best title, make sure to place the primary keyword at most left as possible in the title. Also, do include secondary keywords (related keywords) variations in the title along with the primary keyword.
Meta Description
The second most important meta tag in SEO is Meta Description.
A short description about the webpage in between 155-160 characters. However, you can extend this length to 180 characters for acquiring ranking for different keyword variations.
The Meta Description tag gives you more space for adding your desired keywords and helps Google to map your webpage for the desired keywords.
So, in this particular tag as well, map your primary and related secondary keywords. You can market your web page smartly by adding unique secondary keywords here that you haven’t added in the Meta title.
Also, do note that Google has exclusively stated that Meta Description won’t affect your ranking. However, when you use the keywords in the meta description and searchers looking for the same keyword and if everything is alright and Google shows the same meta description then the CTR of your result will be increased which would directly impact the ranking.
So, while Google has stated that meta description won’t affect your ranking (directly) but it will definitely affect it indirectly.
Here is how a particular Meta Description code looks:
<meta name="description" content="Write your meta description here"/>Make sure to write the meta description that resonates both with the page as well as the search intent. And, yes don’t write a duplicate meta description (that you have already written for some other web page).
Meta Robots Tag
The Meta Robots Tag controls the crawling and indexing of a webpage.
These tags tell the search engine whether to analyze or display the webpage in search results.
Below is an example of how a particular meta robots tag look:
<meta name="robots" content="follow, index">Now, inside the content attribute, you can define different instructions like:
Follow: This instruction will tell search engines to follow or crawl any links present inside the webpage. Leaving this field blank will apply the default setting (which is follow the links).
Nofollow: This instruction tells search engines not to follow any links present inside the webpage.
Index: This instruction tells search engines to index the page in the search result. Now, it’s up to the search to index the page or not (depends on various factors like helpful content, unique content and so on).
NoIndex: This instruction tells search engines not to index the web page in the search result.
Meta Viewport Tag
The Meta Viewport Tag helps you to control the appearance of your webpage on mobile or other devices.
Here, viewport means the visible portion of a webpage. Hence as its name suggests, this tag adjusts the webpage’s width for giving the best visual appearance.
Here is how a typical Meta Viewport Tag looks:
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">Infact, Google has said that they look at this tag to identify whether a web page is mobile friendly or not. And, you know that mobile friendliness is a ranking factor.
Meta Refresh Redirect Tag
The Meta Refresh Redirect Tag will tell the browser to refresh and redirect a web page after a particular interval of time.
Here is how a typical meta refresh redirect tag looks:
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="2;url="https://example.com/">In the above code, the number present in the content attribute represents the time delay in seconds after which a particular webpage (where this tag is present) will be redirected to https://example.com.
While Google respects this tag, it is suggested not to use them unless and until it is absolutely necessary.
That’s because most browsers don’t support this tag. Also it confuses users because once they open any webpage, it will redirect them to some other location.
So, instead of using the meta refresh redirect tag, it is recommended to safely use 301 or 302 redirects.
Meta Charset Tag
The Meta Charset Tag tells the browser how to display the text present inside the webpage.
Here Charset means Character Set. Now, while there are hundreds of Character sets available, two most commonly used are:
- UTF-8: Character set for Unicode
- ISO-8859-1: Character set for Latin Alphabet
This tag is important from a user experience point of view, because a wrong character set can display wrong characters on the browser.
Now, from SEO point of view, this tag is important because lacking this can increase the bounce rate and decrease the dwell time. Also, it may happen that search engines won’t understand your content which ultimately leads to lower ranking.
To add a UTF-8 character set in your webpage, simply add the below code in the <head> section of your webpage.
<meta charset="UTF-8">Meta Tags Best Practices
- It is suggested not to apply NoFollow instruction on your internal links. That’s because search engines won’t crawl it.
- Google suggests to use the UTF-8 character set in your webpage for giving the optimal experience.
- The Meta Title Tag should give the optimal experience when written under 55-60 characters.
- Similiarly, The Meta Description gives the optimal experience when written under 155-160 characters.
- Don’t use Meta Refresh Redirect tag unless and untill it is extremly necessary.
How to Add Meta Tags to Website?
To add meta tags to your website, simply open the webpage source code (the html) and then add the required meta tags in the <head> section.
So, these are the 6 types of meta tags that are particularly useful from a search engine optimization point of view. If you know about any more meta tags, feel free to let me know in the comment section down below.
