What are meta tags?
Meta tags are playing an important role in SEO. Meta tags guide browsers on how to display your website on your device. In other words, they can ensure that your website looks well on both desktop and mobile devices.
We’ll guide you through the best practices for utilising meta tags to improve your web pages in this post. You’ll also learn how to assist search engines detect and rank your web pages.
Why Meta Tags Are Important For SEO?
Better meta tags might make the difference between your page’s success and failure.
If you have blank meta tags (such as a blank title or meta description), Google may determine the best ones for your website. Its algorithm is not optimal and may produce less than you would want to see.
This is why it is critical to have at least a physical page title and description for your page. Otherwise, you leave the decision to Google’s algorithm.
The 3 types we’ll discuss here:
Title Tag
Title tags, on the other hand, are the most significant of all the meta tags covered in this article. These tags have a meaningful influence on search rankings and, perhaps more crucially, are the only ones that are visible to the typical user.
There are several reasons why a website may opt not to invest in title tags. However, having a good title tag may be a huge determining factor in how Google reads your website.
If you’re creating a completely new website, you generally won’t need to bother about SEO efforts on your title tag. However, as your site begins to receive visitors, you’ll want to monitor metrics such as bounce and conversion rates.
Meta Description Attribute
The meta description is an essential meta tag since it tells search engines and (occasionally) searchers what your page is about.
It generates a brief and relevant overview of what that specific web page is about. In its most basic form, this is a sales presentation for your website. Its purpose is to persuade the user that your page is exactly what they’re looking for.
It’s crucial to remember that the meta description tag does not always appear in Google search results (Google usually selects a piece of text from the page itself), but it is beneficial in other ways. Google has also said that keywords in meta descriptions will have no effect on your rankings.
Meta Robots Attribute
You may manage indexing and crawling of your sites with the meta robots tag. In summary, this enables you to regulate the indexation of specific pages on a more granular level.
It should be noted that this option may only be read and followed if the page itself is crawlable and available to Google.
The robots attributes instruct search engines on what to do with your pages:
index/noindex – This instructs search engines whether or not to include your page in their results.
follow/nofollow – This instructs search engines whether or not to trust and “follow” links on your site to the next page.
Unique Meta Description For Each Page
Google notes that having identical, or even comparable, meta descriptions on different web pages is useless when these sites show in the SERPs.
It advises SEO professionals to write meta descriptions that are unique and correctly explain the individual page.
It also advises using site-level descriptions on the main home page (or aggregate pages) and page-level descriptions on all other sorts of pages.
Ensure Your Meta Description is Relevant
Google suggests putting useful information about the website in the meta description.
It states that for news and blog items, these meta descriptions might include the author, publication date, and byline information that would otherwise be hidden.
Furthermore, product pages with unique information distributed across the page that may be useful to users should be provided here as well.
According to Google, a strong meta description may contain all of the important information a visitor could need to determine whether or not to visit that particular page.
Create A High Enough Quality Meta Descriptions
Google’s guidelines also emphasise the importance of meta descriptions. It also expects to see a high level of quality here, so make sure your meta descriptions are descriptive.
Conclusion
Some feel that meta tags fall on the list of tasks for optimising your web pages.
However, when it comes to attaining higher ranks, effectively optimising your meta tags may occasionally put you ahead of the pack.
Meta tags aren’t difficult to implement yourself; you don’t need a coder, just basic HTML knowledge. Marketers like you may use SEO tools to assess your pages for SEO status and learn about your competition. From there, you may create high-quality meta tags for your website.