SEO Meta Tags
SEO Meta Tags Meta tags are HTML code snippets, present in the source code, that provide valuable information about search engines and users. Optimisation of Meta tags are crucial, because they help drive traffic, impact click-through rates, and increase search rankings. How do Meta Tags work? Meta tags help search engines understand what the content of your webpage is all about. Meta tags use the <meta> tag and are placed in the <head> section of your page. Best Meta Tags for SEO Meta Title The meta title tells the search engine what the main heading of your page is. The title is usually the first piece of information users see before deciding to click on the site. So ensure the title is relevant to the search intent, make use of the target keyword, and keep it brief. Meta Description The meta description provides an outline of your content. Search engines display it in the snippet of the search results. It’s important because according to Google, meta description provides a short summary of the content to inform and convince users that’s what they are exactly looking for. Keep it brief, but descriptive, and relevant to search intent and keyword. Meta Robots Meta robots help search engines to decide whether they should crawl your webpages. It’s important to add the right attribute to your tags, if not, then it could lead to a negative impact for your site’s presence in search rankings. Here are the attributes to add to your tag: Index: to index content Noindex: to not index Follow: to crawl links on the page Nofollow: not to crawl links on the page Use Meta robot only if you want Google to crawl a certain way. Meta Viewport Meta viewport lets you adjust and control the width and of the screen so it’s compatible on desktop, tablet, or mobile. This is vital, because it indicates to Google that your webpage is mobile-friendly and will rank higher in mobile search results. Meta Charset The meta charset is the specific character encoding for the HTML document. It tells the browser what character encoding to use for the web page to show desired content. Common character sets: UTF-8: Character encoding for Unicode ISO-8859-1: Character encoding for the Latin alphabet If the wrong encoding is used, then certain characters will be displayed incorrectly, which can lead to bad user experience. Some problems that may arise: Search engines will not comprehend content No backlinks High bounce rate Meta Refresh Redirect The meta refresh redirect tag tells the browser to redirect to another URL. However, it is advised you should not use them for reasons mentioned below. Can confuse users Not supported by all browsers Pages need to be analyzed before seeing a different URL, which requires some time. It’s important to also ensure you include a canonical meta tag. Therefore, it’s advised to use a 301 redirect instead. FAQs What is a meta canonical tag? Meta canonical, also called “rel=canonical”, is what lets search engines know which page is more preferred when there is replicate or similar content across many URLS. It tells search engines which page is the main version of the URL and helps to know which page should be indexed, leading to enhanced SEO optimization for search rankings. What are the best meta description practices? Website meta descriptions are important to include as this provides a snippet of what the website is about to users before they click on the site. So, aim for a descriptive tag, but also ensure it’s not super lengthy (around 155 characters). Don’t overstuff with keywords and include the most important information first, to keep users engaged. You can also measure the effectiveness of your description tag by tracking click-through rates (CTR). How do I implement a meta description html? To add a SEO meta description tag to your page, you have to add the <meta name=”description” content=”Your description here.”> tag in the <head> section of the HTML document. Meta description tags are crucial to both the search engine and users. Are meta keywords the same as keyword research? No, they are not. Keyword research is the process of identifying relevant keywords or phrases in order to best optimize your website and rank higher in search engines through organic search. It includes identifying keywords that match search intent and analysing search volume and competition. Meta keywords are a meta tag that appear in the HTML code of a page. This helps search engines understand your webpage. However, Google no longer uses meta keywords to rank in search results.