What are Meta Tags?

SEO strategy creation: Meta tags provide information, also called “metadata,” about the webpage in the HTML of the document. Search engines and web crawlers can read this metadata, which isn’t displayed on the page itself.

Search engines use metadata from meta tags to comprehend additional information about the webpage. They can use this data to rank pages, display snippets in search results, and sometimes ignore meta tags.

The <title> and <description> elements are examples of meta tags. 

In this guide, we’ll discuss how to use the 6 most important meta tags for SEO:   

1. Meta Title

This is the page title displayed in search results by Google and most other search engines.

Why it’s important for SEO strategy creation

Titles are important because it gives users an overview of what to expect from the content and its relevance to their search query. Users use this information to determine which result to click on, so it’s crucial to use high-quality titles on your web pages. 

Best practices

• Write a unique meta title for each page
• Be brief, but descriptive
• Avoid vague and generic titles
• Use sentence case or title case
• Create something click-worthy, not clickbait
• Match search intent
• Include your target keyword where it’s relevant
• Keep it under 60 characters

2. Meta Description

The meta description summarises the content of a webpage. Search engines quite often use it for the snippet in search results.

Why it’s important for SEO strategy creation

Generally, a meta description tag should interest and inform users with a short summary of what a particular page is about. Basically, they are like a pitch that convinces the user to click on that page.

Best practices 

• Write a unique meta description for each webpage
• Try to summarise content accurately
• Avoid generic descriptions
• Use sentence case
• Create something click-worthy, not clickbait
• Match search intent
• Include your target keyword where it’s relevant
• Keep it under 160 characters

3. Meta Robots

The meta robots tag informs search engines if and how they should crawl your web pages.

Why it’s important for SEO strategy creation

Using the wrong attributes in the meta robots tag can have disastrous consequences on your site’s visibility in the search results. Your SEO efforts depend on your understanding of this tag and using it effectively. Here are the values you can use in the meta robots tag: seo strategy creation

• index: instructs bots to index the page;
• noindex: instructs bots not to index the page;
• follow: instructs bots to crawl links on the page, and that you also vouch for them;
• nofollow: instructs bots not to crawl links on the page and implies no endorsement.

Best practices 

• Use meta robots tags only to restrict the way Google crawls a particular page
• In robots.txt, don’t block pages with meta robots tags

4. Meta viewport

A meta viewport tag specifies the visible area of a web page. It instructs the browser how to render the page on different screen sizes (i.e., mobile/tablet/desktop). seo strategy creation

Why it’s important for SEO strategy creation

The “presence of this tag in a page indicates to Google that page is mobile-friendly.” Google now ranks mobile-friendly web pages higher in mobile search results as of 2015.

When a page’s desktop version loads on mobile, many people will most likely hit the back button. It’s annoying and makes reading difficult. This may send negative signals to Google, indicating that something is wrong with your page.

Best practices

• Use meta viewport tag on all the web pages
• Unless you know what you’re doing, use the “standard” tag.

5. Meta charset

The meta charset tag specifies the web page’s character encoding. In other words, it instructs the browser on how to display the text on your web page.

There are hundreds of different character sets on the internet, but the two most common are:

UTF-8: Character encoding for Unicode

ISO-8859-1: Character encoding for the Latin alphabet

Why it’s important for SEO strategy creation

Character formatting issues are bad for the user experience and can make your pages look quite broken.

That can lead to SEO problems like:

• People wouldn’t want to link to your page.
• Low time on page, high bounce rate, and low dwell time.
• Search engines not comprehending your content.

But let’s be honest here:

The impact will be minimal unless your page is severely broken due to charset issues, which is unlikely.

Nonetheless, Google recommends using Unicode/UTF-8 whenever possible.

Best practices

Use the meta charset tag on all your webpages

Use UTF-8 where possible;

Use the correct syntax for your HTML version

6. Meta refresh redirects

A meta refresh tag instructs the web browser to redirect users to another URL after a set amount of time.

Why it’s important for SEO strategy creation

Even though Google understands and respects meta refresh redirect tags, you shouldn’t use them for SEO purposes.

There are a few reasons for this:

• Not all browsers support it
• Can be confusing to users (and increase security concerns);
• Pages must be parsed before they can see the destination URL, which can take time.

Best practices

• Avoid using meta refresh redirect tags unless absolutely required
• Use a 301 redirect instead

Final Thoughts

Meta tags aren’t that difficult to understand. Knowing the six listed above should be enough to avoid any significant SEO blunders. Also, if you’re looking to maximise your traffic, Contact Us.