Meta tags are HTML elements that provide information about a webpage to search engines and website visitors.
These tags are added to the HTML code of the webpage and are not visible on the page itself.
Meta tags are placed in the header section of your page HTML so that search engine crawlers like Googlebot and Bingbot can easily find them.
The most common meta-tags that almost all website owners use are meta descriptions and meta titles.
What do meta tags do?
Meta tags give search engines key information about your page so that they can display it in the organic search results.
Think of it like a quick overview of the page in a way that search engines like Google can easily understand.
This overview includes-
And more! Taking control of your meta tags is essential because they play a major role in your website’s visibility in the search engine results pages.
What Will I Learn?
Meta tags are important because they help search engines understand and display your content correctly in the search results.
They can also significantly impact your site’s click-through rate, rankings and overall visibility.
Important, right?
But here’s the thing…
There are different types of meta tags. Some meta tags are more important than others because they have a greater impact on your site.
The good news is that you have complete control of your meta tags.
That means you can optimise them to generate more traffic and maximise your website visibility in the SERPs.
The most common examples of a meta tag are the meta description and meta title.
Here’s an example of what they look like in HTML format:
The title tag is displayed first in Google search results, and the meta description appears under the website URL slug.
Here’s an example of how they look in the search results:
Think of these two meta tags as your advertisements in the SERPs.
They should be optimised for SEO and high click-through rates.
These are the most important types of meta tags:
The title tag is the most important meta tag for SEO and appears as the clickable blue headline in search results.
The title tag is typically the same as or very similar to the main headline on the page. It should include the main target keyword naturally and stay under 60 characters.
Write the title tag using SEO copywriting principles to maximise the number of clicks you generate from the SERPs.
The meta description provides a brief summary of your page content and appears under your title tag and URL.
It’s common for Google to rewrite your meta-description using content from the page. They do this to personalise it for users and generate high click-through rates for your site.
Still, it’s important that you write a great meta description that includes your target keyword. It should be less than 160 characters and provide an overview of what users will find when they click to your site.
Think of it like a mini-advertisement for your page.
Meta robot tags are where you can provide specific instructions to your search engines about handling your webpage.
This includes directives like-
They allow you to manage how Google can use and handle your content.
For example:
You use a noindex meta tag to keep specific pages out of the search results or nofollow to prevent search engines from following links on the page.
Meta robots tags are not visible in the search results or your website page.
Meta keywords were used to tell search engines what keywords your content was related to. They were designed to help Google’s algorithm understand your content.
As you can imagine, people spammed meta keywords on every page to maximise their rankings.
Google removed meta keywords from their ranking algorithm back in September 2009.
There is no point in adding meta keywords anymore.
They have no impact on search rankings today.
Open Graph meta tags control how your content looks when you (or others) share a link on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
It appears as a preview like this:
With open graph meta tags, you can control which image, title, and description appear in social shares.
This helps you maximise engagement and clicks from social media.
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