What Are Meta Tags And Why Is It Important?

By Author: Ananth Parsad
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EO Meta tag is an invisible tag which tells about the data of your page and they make easier for search engines to determine what your content is all about. It plays a major role in SEO.

They are placed in section of the HTML document. CMS like word press will have a dedicated section for Meta tags like Meta description and canonical links.

However, before knowing how to add a Meta tag to your website, let’s talk about why they are so important for us.

Why SEO Meta Tags are Important?

As mentioned above, Meta tags provide search engines and website visitors that match your website’s search engine result pages (SERPs) with more details about your site. They can be tweaked to highlight the key elements of your content and to show your website in the search results.

Search engines are placing increasing importance on the quality of the user experience, especially by ensuring that your site responds optimally to the user’s request. Meta tags help in this regard by ensuring that the information that researchers need to know about your website is presented in a clear and useful way.

Some ...
... types of Meta tags are related to the structure of the page and ensure easy navigation on your site. Others tell search engines which parts of their page are important and which parts should be ignored.

There are many types of Meta tags that perform different roles, and all are irrelevant to SEO. For a complete list, see our complete Meta Tag Guide.

However, for the purposes of this Quick Start Guide, we have selected the six most important SEO Meta tags that you should know to optimize your search.

1. Title tag

The title tag is one of the first things users notice in SERPs. This is the title of your page that offers an overview of its content.

This is important as it appears in the search results, but also as anchor text and social action titles.

This means that your title tag must be clear and descriptive and not longer than 55 characters.

If you can put a keyword into these 55 characters, you can improve your SEO, but the most important thing to watch out for is adding value. A title that has the right keyword, without being clearly defined, does not necessarily improve the results.

Your title tag is not just about your visitors, it’s also about search engines that discover your content. Therefore, you must combine clarity and context so that your title makes sense for everyone.

If you’re using an add-on like Yoast SEO in Word Press, it’s easier to add your title tag in the SEO section to preview your page and view the search results.

Another way to add the title tag is to use the website’s HTML code, which should look like this:

Example:

Example of title

2. Meta description

The meta description tells about Metadata

The meta-description is of equal importance for the title tag. If the title tag is the title displayed at the top of the search result, the Meta description is the extract below. it tells about the metadata of your page. Metadata is information or data which is provided in the meta description.

SEE ALSO: What is Google Search Operators? Full List of Operators
The Meta description must contain a precise description of the content of your page. This is usually the element that determines whether users click on your page. Therefore, it is important to optimize your time.

Previously, the optimal length of the Meta descriptions was 150 to 165 characters. However, a recent refresh of Google’s search results led to longer clippings.

You can add a Meta description via Yoast SEO, or you can add it manually in HTML code.

Example:

3. Robots meta tag

The Meta tag of the robot informs search engines which pages of your website should be indexed. This Meta tag has a similar purpose to robots.txt. It is typically used to prevent a search engine from indexing individual pages, while robots.txt prevents indexing an entire site or an entire section of a site.

A robot tag that tells the engine not to index a page or follow a link is written as follows:

However, if you want to tell the robot to index and crawl your page, you must replace the robot tag with:

If you do not add a Meta-Robots tag, by default your page will be indexed and crawled.

Why do you have to use this Meta tag? It may be that you have some necessary pages on your site, but the content is rather scarce. They do not want them to be indexed in the search, but they are still important to the site. Therefore, you can use a noindex tag to prevent them from being displayed in the SERPs.

Google also requires links not to be tracked under certain circumstances. In 2016, for example, a guide was issued whereby bloggers no longer follow the links they inserted as part of a product review because “those links are not organic.” If you do not want to follow a single link, add rel = “nofollow” to the HTML link.

However, if you do not want to track all the links on a particular page, you can do so with the Robot Meta tag.

4. Alt text

Image optimization has become a very important part of modern SEO, as it offers an additional opportunity to appear in search results, this time with its visual content.

Your images must be accessible to search engines and people. Alternative text can do both: it provides a textual alternative to the images that are displayed when the image is not loaded or read by a screen reader. It also tells the search engines what this image is going to represent.

You can include keywords in your image substitution text, but only if this is a good idea. Do not include this tag with keywords as this will only affect the user experience of your visitors. Have reachability requirements.

5. Canonical tag

If the pages on your site are nearly identical, you may need to tell search engines the priorities. Or you may have subscribed to the content of your website, which has been republished elsewhere. You can do both without causing a duplicate content penalty as long as you use a canonical label.

Instead of harassing Google and losing its SERP rank, it tells crawlers which URL is considered “main.” This highlights the good URL and prevents others from taking advantage of your SEO.

A canonical tag can look like this in HTML code:

6. Header tag (h1, h2, h3, etc.)
Header tags are part of their content. In summary, these are the headers that are used to structure your page.

In addition to improving the user experience and readability, header tags can help search engines understand the content of their content.

The order of the header labels (h1 to h6) shows the importance of each section. An h1 tag usually refers to the title of the page or the title of the article, while h2 and earlier versions serve as subtitles to separate the content.

As important as header labels are, do not use them too often: think of quality, not quantity. If you have five different types of titles on your page, this will not help your SEO. Instead, tactically use them to separate their content and represent the main point of each section.

Example:

an easy guide to meta tags in SEO

first paragraph

second paragraph

why do meta tags are important

third paragraph

six meta tags to improve optimization of your website

Title tag

It suggests that only use one h1 tag in your content while you can use more than one h2 and h3 tags.

How to Optimize Your SEO Meta Tags: A Checklist
Meta tags can help search engines and researchers. You can help improve the user experience and visualize your company’s information.

This can help to improve the authority, the presence in the searches and thus the classification.

If you’re ready to check your performance with meta tags, here’s a quick checklist to get started:

Check if all your pages and content have title tags and meta descriptions
Start paying more attention to your titles and the structure of your content
Do not forget to mark your pictures with an alternative text.
Use robotic Meta tags to help search engines access their content.
Search for duplicate pages and use canonical tags to avoid hiding your own content with duplicate or similar content.
Create a checklist of steps that you need to repeat as you create new content and make Meta tags an integral part of your routine.

Conclusion:

I hope you have understood regarding the Meta tag creations. If you have found more good information about this topic then share with us and give valuable feedback on this topic in the comment section below. So it will help us to improve our content.

Ananth Prasath is the blogger where you get Latest updates related to Digital Marketing. Inspired to Work and Share the best possible solutions in order to make you have a great overall Internet Marketing Experience.