Meta tags are the first things you’ll set up when creating a web page.

What are Meta Tags?

Meta tags are HTML tags that enable people using search engines to find your website more accessible.

Let’s examine the essential elements

The title and description often make up the entire meta entry. If it is not defined, then it will display only your URL.

Title, description, and metadata tags are the most significant elements of SEO. However, advanced digital marketing requires more tags for improved search-result rankings.

Google’s search engine prioritizes certain tags because they provide essential context for visitors.

We will explore meta tags, which can help you improve your website’s ranking on search engines.

Meta Tags: How Brand Image and Click-through Rates Are Affected

Your website’s first impression on most visitors is the words you use in your title and meta description tags. However, using metadata correctly is like sending a professional email to a business associate.

For example, Amazon uses a short description, a picture, and a title to identify each product it sells. 

A carefully chosen tagline can define the appearance of an automated social media post as it makes it easy for others to share your posts.

Best practices for tags

  • Title Tags

More often than not, the meta tag is not labeled a meta tag but instead appears in the header area of a web page. 

In Google search results, the limit for title tags is 70 characters on a desktop and 78 on a mobile device. However, it does not mean that you need to use all the characters to write the tags. 

Using Long-tail keywords makes a difference in your search result. For example, let’s take a simple title, “Best Interior Designing Trends”. You get a set of results, but a different set of results will appear if the year is added to the title like “Best Interior Designing Trends of 2022”.

Some users are just fine with basic information, whereas others need specific information. We need to include the keyword in our title tags to get the best results for both keywords, or else the search engines would not display our results on the first page.

  • Image Tags

Like HTML title tags, image tags (<img>) are used by search engines, link aggregators, and other sites to identify a site. The HTML code for an image looks like this:

 <img src=“image.jpg” alt=“image description” title=“image tooltip”>.

 The alt and title attributes, which define the image’s content, should always be carefully considered for the best experience. The title attribute will display on your screen when you hover your cursor over it, and the alt attribute will display when it can’t show the image.

If you upload an image in WordPress, you must enter the title, caption, alt text, and description. By filling out as many fields as possible, you make your images more searchable.

Your images should be optimized well for search engines to locate them quickly.

  • Meta Tag Description

A meta description tag gives you the ability to provide a quick overview of your content. However, it is limited to 160 characters and isn’t directly connected to Google’s search algorithm. Description tags help encourage people to click through to a website.

Google will use its text as the preview sentence without a meta description, which is ok. However, it is essential to note that additional information can increase the quantity of your content and make it more searchable.

  • Robot Meta Tags

Although meta tags are an essential part of search engine optimization, not all of your web pages need them. By default, all pages created on your website are indexed by search bots and web crawlers.

You will use the robot meta tag only when you want to redirect them. The noindex code is written as 

<html>

    <head>

          <meta name=”robots” content=noindex”/>

          (…)

    </head>

</html>

The code is written within the header tag, which tells that this page is not indexed.

Code for robot nofollow

<meta name=”robots” content=’nofollow>

It provides a way to indicate links that are not followed by the search engines, keeping it clean for the bots.

  • Keyword Meta Tags

Search algorithms do not use keyword tags to determine search ranking. The HTML code looks like

<meta name=”keywords” content=”HTML, CSS, XML, JavaScript”>

These tags are more useful in WordPress. Keyword tags and categories help Google identify which Web pages on your site should rank higher than others in its search results.

  • Heading Tags (H1 – H6)

Heading tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) identify critical topics and subheadings on a web page from other text types such as paragraphs. While tags H2 through H6 are considered less important to search engines, many industry studies have emphasized the importance of adequately using H1 tags.

Headings are critical for text and content organization. Content architecture depends on the use of heading tags. 

  • For Search engines: Well-organized content is more easily read and understood than content that lacks structure.
  • For Users: Headings break up long text sections, making it easier for readers to navigate the page.

We suggest that you make sure your page’s title and H1 are similar. To do this, try changing the order a little bit, switching it up here and there.

  • Canonical Link tags

You can indicate to search engines which version of a page is the original by using rel=” canonical” on the HTML source code for that page. It’s commonly used in cases where two or more pages have the same content, or a single page is available under multiple URLs.

Internal duplicate content may not threaten search engine rankings as copied content, but unless you tell search engines which URL you prefer to rank, they may choose one arbitrarily.

The URL you select will be crawled, and others will be left behind. A second benefit is that you can easily track statistics associated with the content by canonicalizing the page.

  • Social Media Meta Tags

The Open Graph protocol, introduced by Facebook, allows you to control how a web page looks when shared on social media; LinkedIn now also recognizes the protocol. Twitter cards offer a similar function but are exclusive to Twitter.

Open Graph Tags:

  • og: title: on the home page, you specify the title of your article. 
  • Og:url: Your page URL
  • og: description – will display your description. Your page’s description can be up to 300 hundred characters.
  • Og: image – You can insert the URL of an image you want to be displayed when someone links to your page.

  • Viewport Meta tag

The viewport meta tag is used to configure how a page is scaled to fit the display of any device. The tag and the value is defined as

<meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width, initial-scale=1″/>

 By adding “width=device-width” and “initial scale=1” to the <meta> tag, the page will match the screen’s width in device-independent pixels, taking into account its orientation. 

The viewport meta tag does not directly affect rankings, but it influences user experience. It’s essential for mobile-friendly websites, given that mobile browsing is becoming increasingly popular worldwide.

Conclusion

Please don’t neglect the minor tweaks that can add to the big picture when optimizing your web pages. Meta tags remain a must-have, as they make up the taxonomy of your web pages.

Additional tags can make a difference in ranking in search engines. Making small changes that help users and search engines better understand your site will pay off in the long run and may help you gain a competitive advantage over sites that lack such detail.

Hope this article has given you adequate information on Meta tags. To know more about it, you can contact Ahbiv.

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