You may have heard about how meta tags are an important part of a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, but what are they exactly? Our SEO experts are here to answer that question and more to set your website on the path of success!
What Are Meta Tags?
Simply put, meta tags are pieces of HTML code that provide information about a web page to search engines and website visitors. Meta tags are in the coding of the head section of a web page and are not visible on the page itself. Despite their invisibility on the front end, they are an essential part of SEO and determine how your site will appear in search engine results.
Types of Meta Tags
There are different kinds of meta tags that fill various roles in your SEO strategy, including:
Title Tags: Define the title of a web page. It’s one of the most important meta tags for SEO, influencing both search engine rankings and user clicks.
Title tags appear in the browser tab (shown below).
The also show up as the clickable headline in search engine results (shown below).
Meta Descriptions: Provides a brief summary of the page’s content. Appears under the title in search engine results. A well-crafted meta description can improve click-through rates.
Meta Keywords: This tag is used to list important keywords for each page. The relevance for these tags has significantly decreased and most search engines no longer use it for ranking purposes.
Viewport Meta Tag: This tag controls how a web page is displayed on mobile devices. It is essential for responsive web design and making sure your site is mobile-friendly.
Robots Meta Tag: This tag gives instructions to search engine crawlers about how to index a page.
Charset Meta Tag: This tag specifies character encoding for the HTML document and ensures that the text is displayed correctly in various browsers.
Best Practices for Meta Tags
Title Tags:
- Keep the total character count under 60 to avoid getting cut off in search results.
- Make them as descriptive as possible and relate to the page’s contents.
- Make sure each page has its own unique tags
Meta Descriptions:
- Aim for 160 or fewer total characters.
- Include a call-to-action within the description.
- Accurately reflect the content included on the page to avoid high bounce rates.
- Give each page its own unique description and do not use duplicate descriptions for multiple pages.
Viewport Tags:
- Test your site on various devices to confirm mobile-friendliness.
Robot Tags:
- Prevent indexing of duplicate content or low-value pages.
- Ensure important pages are set to “index, follow”.
Charset Tags:
- Always include the charset tag to prevent text display issues.
Our team includes SEO specialists that will put meta tags in place to ensure your website is ready to be found by search engines!
Contact us today for help in creating and implementing your website’s SEO strategy!
