Importance Of Meta Tags In SEO
Nowadays, websites that don’t have meta tags are lacking behind in the SEO world. They are missing out on the golden chance for ranking within the search results. If you are one of those people, then we advise you to continue reading this article.
What Are Meta Tags?
Meta Tags are HTML tags which are used to give additional information about the website or webpage. Normally these meta tags are hidden from the users and are mainly used by bots, such as search engine crawlers. These pieces of vital information help visitors to your site and search engines to know more about your webpage and its data. A meta tag will only appear in the page’s coding, and anyone can view it through the site’s source code. You can think of meta tags as the search engine’s first impression of your page.
Meta tags consist of:
Title Tags
The title tag is used to generate the title on a search result snippet and is used to quickly identify what the page is about, both from a user and search engine point of view.
Meta Description
The meta description is the short bit of content below the title on a search result snippet.
Viewport Tag
The viewport tag controls how your website should be scaled depending on the user’s device/resolution. An incorrectly configured viewport tag can result in reduced user experience for mobile users.
Robots
The robots meta tag (not robots.txt!) allows you to control whether a page should be indexed (“noindex”) and whether search engines should crawl the URLs on the page (“nofollow”). Remember, meta robots and robots.txt are different things!
Hreflang Tags
Hreflang tags enables the search engines to start identifying the country and language you want the content displayed for international audiences. This is especially important for global companies which may have multiple pages of the same content but translate in different languages.
Open Graph Tags
Open Graph Tags are used to customise the featured image, description and title tags for specific social media websites. With this, you can have a different title tags for Google Search, Facebook and Twitter.
Canonical Tags
A canonical URL tag is used to specify which URL the search engine should value. This is mainly used for duplicate/thin content pages. If you have a duplicate/thin content on your website which adds value to the user but not to the search engines, you should set a canonical URL to the main version which the search engines will use to evaluate the quality and rank.
Importance of Meta Tags
They are vital because they affect how your website appears within the SERPs. They also impact the number of people who are inclined to click through to your site. It will also impact the engagement and traffic rates of your site, affecting the rankings and SEO. Meta tags form an essential part of SEO strategy today.
Although certain tags may not directly influence the rankings, they affect how your website shows up in the digital ecosystem. Also, they might be a factor in multiple search results that are non-traditional such as voice, knowledge graph, and Google image search. No brands need to neglect them while developing their content.
How To Use Meta Tags
Multiple meta tags like meta description length and title tags will affect how relevant your website displays in the SERP. Whenever the users receive the results list, they will come across your meta description and site title. The users will scan this info to decide if they should visit the particular result. Here, if you include your primary keyword in these sections, there will be a boost in your apparent relevancy within the SERP. It will elevate your CTR (Click-Through-Rate).
Since the title tag of your SEO appears in your web page’s tab whenever the user has many web pages open, the title will assist you by tempting the user to click back over to your page and engage in your content. With the rest of the tags, including viewport tags and content type, you will be helping Google in better understanding your content. The Viewport tags ensure that your content offers the mobile device users a positive experience.
Also, other tags such as the Hreflang tags and Robots are crucial whenever you possess specific restrictions regarding your content. It could be content that you don’t want to be indexed and specifically written content for people from different countries. Your content will be appropriately indexed and showed to the correct audience when you file out these tags. These essential tags will save you from hurting your site’s reputation and rankings.
Conclusion
Now we all know the importance surrounding the use of meta tags. They play a key role in your website because they inform search engines on what your page is all about. Without meta tags, you can’t possibly expect to excel in the SEO world. We strongly advise you to follow up on its use at all times for your business to flourish.
