Meta tags are small elements that can have a significant impact on your website’s performance and have a direct effect on rankings, traffic, and revenue. Proper use of meta tags allows you to influence the information displayed in search results.

It allows you to present your content to interested browsers, which can significantly improve your website’s click-through rate (CTR) in the SERPs.

In this article, we will look at what meta tags are and give you an overview of the most important meta tags and how to add them to your website to get more visibility and clicks in search results.

Let’s dive without further ado into the sphere of meta tags.

What Are Meta Tags?

Meta tags are parts of the HTML tag code that provide information about the site and describe the content of your page to search engines and site visitors. While some meta tags are visible to users, such as the title, most meta tags appear only in the page code and are invisible to users.

Although the meta tags placed on the page are invisible to users, they appear in the SERPs. These tags allow Google bot and other web crawlers to read descriptions of your page’s composition and understand whether it matches users’ search intent.

Properly prescribed meta tags can improve your SEO by controlling how a website appears in search results. In addition, with meta tags, you can tell search engines which version of a page to index, remove pages from the index, and ensure the correct page appears in search results if your website targets an international audience with a country or language.

Why Meta Tags Are Essential for SEO?

While meta tags are not themselves a ranking factor for search engines, high-quality meta tags are essential for effective digital marketing and technical SEO.

When your pages appear in search results, search engine users will read your meta title and meta description as the page’s title and its content and decide whether or not they want to access your page.

Effective meta tags, with their prevalence in the search engine user experience, can improve your URL’s click-through rate (CTR), which generates more traffic, reduces bounce rates, and improves your site’s on-page SEO.

9 Main Meta Tags for SEO

Let’s dive deeper into the most common types of meta tags and how they affect on-page SEO.

1. Title Tag

The title tag is the HTML page title of an HTML document and is the first HTML element that specifies the subject of your web page to search engines and visitors. It appears as a snippet in search results and is also used by browsers to label the browser tab.

This tag is used as the page title in search results from Google and most other search engines. Title tags are essential for SEO and visitors because they appear on the search engine results page (SERP) and in the browser tabs.

As Google says, the title is the first thing users see when evaluating search results. The title should provide the user with a quick understanding of the information on the page and how it relates to their search query. Because most often, the title is the only information a person uses to decide whether or not to click on the link.

For search engines, it is essential that the user can quickly receive the relevant page on demand. It increases the likelihood that the exact well-crafted title you entered will appear in the search result.

If users do not find the information they need when they visit a page, they may leave it, and Google will lower the page in its search results.

In the source code, the title, like all meta tags, is written as <head> </head> :

<head>

<title>This is an example of a title</title>

</head>

Keeping in mind Google’s guidelines, here are the Best Practices for Meta Titles:

– Make sure a title tag is present on all web pages

– The optimal length of the title tag is 60-70 characters. Keep your title tag below 60 characters. The text will be cut off in the search results if you write more. It is not recommended to be much shorter as you lose a valuable resource.

– Create a unique title for each page, avoiding common phrases.

– Create a compelling title that shows users that your page is the perfect solution to their query to encourage them to click.

– Avoid writing vague titles

– Add a target keyword in each title tag. However, avoid keyword stuffing and repetition.

– Add numbers to your title

– Add “modifiers” to your title tag such as How, The Current Year, Review, Best, Tips, Top, Buy, Find, Easy, Etc.

2. Meta Description

The meta description tag is an HTML element that summarizes your web page. Search engines usually display the meta description in the search results under your title tag if it is relevant to the page.

Google writes in its instructions that the description is not considered when ranking. However, it is still an essential part of search engine optimization, as it can appear in a snippet and affect the user’s decision to click on the link.

Although the meta name=”description” tag does not directly help your SEO, it still has a significant effect on your page’s click-through rate (CTR), as it appears in search results and informs users what your page is about.

If you don’t have this meta tag, Google will generate a description of your page based on its content. Your description should be keyword detailed and summarize the page’s content. It should be at most 160 characters. Mobile characters for search result snippets are now reduced to an average of 130 characters.

Here is an example of a meta description appearing on a search results page:

Here’s how to write a reasonable description tag:

– Don’t emphasize the number of characters, as Google may extract the meta description text from your content based on a user’s query.

– Add your targeted keywords in the descriptions.

– Don’t add duplicate meta descriptions.

– Provide solutions to a problem or add any discounts or offers you have.

– Add a clear call to action (CTA) in your descriptions, such as “apply today,” “check out,” Pay, contact us today, etc.

3. Alternative Text Tag

The Alt tag is essential for all images, as it helps search engines better understand your photos. By adding appropriate alt text to images, you tell search engines what is displayed in the image and how to interpret it. Well-optimized alt tags can bring you traffic from Google image searches. You can place keywords in this description, but the most important thing is the relevance of the description to the image. Don’t overload alt with keywords.

When creating alt text for your website, use the following syntax:

<img src=” http://example.com/title of image.jpg” alt=”title of image” />

Alt is written in after the image link. Most CMSs have handy tools for adding alt tags; you don’t need to work with the page’s source code.

Key points to consider when creating alt tags for images:

– Use clear and precise informative file names

– Create an image sitemap

– Use 50-55 characters in the alt text.

– Use a medium or small file size for faster page load speed but do not compromise the image resolution

4. Meta Robots Tag

The robot’s meta tag provides instructions for search engine spiders to index or not index a web page. The robot’s meta tag does not affect your visitors, only the search engine robots.

The Meta Robots tag has four central values for search engine robots:

– FOLLOW – The search engine crawler will follow all links on this web page

– INDEX – The search engine crawler will index the entire web page

– NOFOLLOW – The search engine crawler will NOT follow the page and links on this web page

– NOINDEX – The search engine crawler will NOT index this web page

Meta Robots tag syntax:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, nofollow”>

Means not to index or not to follow this webpage.

<meta name=”robots” content=”index, follow”>

Means index and follow this webpage.

Note: The Meta robots tag should be placed in the section of your web page.

5. Canonical Tag

A canonical tag is an HTML link tag with the attribute “rel=canonical.” A canonical tag is used to indicate that there are other versions of this web page. By implementing the canonical tag in the code, your website tells search engines that this URL is the main page and that the search engines should not index other pages.

Use the following syntax to add a canonical tag:

For example, if your site has URLS like the following:

– http://www.exemple.com

– https://www.exemple.com

Google considers these URLs as duplicate versions of the homepage. And to solve this problem, the canonical tag (rel=canonical) was invented.

6. Hreflang Tag

If your website is multilingual, the hreflang tag is your most powerful tool to show different versions of a page to the right audience. The hreflang tag aims to tell Google which language version to show users in different countries, which will significantly improve the user experience and your ranking.

Google uses a browser’s location to understand the user’s language intent to show them the version of the page based on their geographic region or preferred language. Hreflang does not directly affect rankings but can significantly reduce bounce rate and increase conversion because it is more convenient for users to use the site in their language.

Hreflang has many SEO benefits. First, it improves the user experience, reducing bounce rates, improving page sessions, and increasing scroll depth. Additionally, if you have an international website, hreflang tags can significantly improve the visitor conversion rates you gain through organic search.

How to add hreflang tags?

Before adding hreflang tags, you need to create your page’s language or regional variants. Then, you can use hreflang to ensure that Google shows each searcher the version of the page that is most relevant to them.

There are two ways to do this:

– Add hreflang tags to individual pages

– Specify language variations in your sitemap. By adding hreflangs to your sitemap, you are communicating your language variations to Google.

To add the hreflang attribute to individual pages, do the following.

– Determine your default URL and any URLs with language or regional variations. (Your variants do not have to be in the same domain).

– Write your hreflang tags in a text editor or using a hreflang generator tool.

– Each hreflang tag should have a specific HTML language and country code, so confirm that your language and regional attributes are correct.

– Add hreflang link elements to the section of your default URL. You should have one link element per page variation.

– Add identical hreflang link elements to the section of each language or regional variation of the web page.

– Make sure that all canonical rels on these web pages automatically reference each other

– Designate the language variations under the default URL in your sitemap using the xhtml:link attribute.

– Any alternate URLs you specify with the xhtml:link attribute should also be added to your sitemap along with all of its variants.

Advice on using hreflang:

Like rel canonicals, hreflang tags instruct Google to display specific URLs over others, so if you use both, be sure not to send conflicting instructions to Google’s crawlers. If your canonical tag identifies another page as the canonical URL, but your hreflang identifies multiple language variants of the current URL, Google won’t understand which page to promote.

– In general, only add hreflang tags to your web pages with self-referencing canonicals.

– Hreflang on each page must be linked to itself and to all alternative pages.

– Google uses the ISO 639-1 format to mark languages and countries. Before registering hreflang, check to see if it is correctly specified in the markup.

– If the page asks the user to choose their preferred language or has no target orientation, you can use x-default.

7. Open Graph Meta Tags and Twitter Cards

These tags facilitate social media synchronization. Open Graph meta tags promote integration between Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, and your website.

Here is an example of how Open Graph tags look in standard HTML:

Twitter cards

Twitter will use Twitter card tags to enhance the display of your page when it is shared on their platform.

Here is an example of how a Twitter card would look in standard HTML:

Twitter cards

Twitter will use Twitter card tags to enhance the display of your page when it is shared on their platform.

Here is an example of how a Twitter card would look in standard HTML:

8. Header Tags

You can use header tags to change font sizes and signify the hierarchy of information on a page. A header tag is used for header creations, that is, by using them we can apply font changes.

The header elements are H1, H2, H3, H4, H5 and H6. H1 is the largest and most important level, and H6 is the smallest and least important. If you mark some text with an H1 tag, you are telling search engines that this is the most important text on that page.

9. Meta Viewport Tag

Viewport Meta tag, also called responsive design meta tag is used to control the layout of web pages on mobile browsers. You can find the viewport element in the header section of your web page. Use the following syntax to add a viewport meta tag:

<meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0″>

Adding this code to the section of each page will help you tell Google that all your pages are optimized for mobile, as well as ensure that your pages display in a way that is ideally suited to your users’ screen size.

Choosing the proper Meta tags for SEO makes your site easy to find. If you don’t add this tag, users may see your content in the wrong format. It will affect their user experience and your ranking, as you will potentially get a higher bounce rate and send negative user engagement signals to Google.

Note: Do not use this responsive Meta tag if your website pages are not responsive, as it will worsen the user experience.

How to Add Meta Tags to Your Website?

All meta tags are stored in the section of the source code. Each CMS has tools to add meta tags; we will discuss them later.

WordPressprogramming language WordPress plugins digital marketing skills SEO trends Product Review

The way you edit meta tags in WordPress depends on the plugin you choose for the site.

Add Meta Tags with The Yoast SEO Plugin.

This WordPress SEO plugin made it one of the most common methods to add meta tags to WordPress. The Yoast SEO plugin has a free and a premium version, but the free version will be sufficient to add meta tags. Once the plugin activates, go to Pages > All or Posts > All, depending on the type of content you want to add meta tags to. Click Edit, then scroll to the bottom of the screen where the Yoast SEO section is located.

Enter your main keyword in the Focus Key phrase section. Next, click the Edit Snippet button to enter your meta description. It will be displayed in search engines and should be a short paragraph describing the page’s content and encouraging browsers to click.

Adding A Meta Tag Without a Plugin

It is easy to add the necessary HTML tags to your header.php file manually, but the tags will not be kept if you change the theme of your site. These meta tags will also apply to the entire website and will not be unique to each post or page.

1. Open the header.php file.

To add meta tags in WordPress without a plugin, you will need to open the header.php file using the file manager or a Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) client. Your metadata should be placed in the tag.

2. Copy and customize the meta tags

Next, copy the generic keyword meta tag below and paste it under the opening tag:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”keywords related to the content of the website” />

Then copy the generic description Meta tag below and paste it under the last line:

<meta name=”description” content=”meta description for the content of the website” />

After that, you can replace the placeholders and fill in your keywords and meta description optimized for your website content.

Conclusion

The SEO meta tags mentioned in this post will help you rank better if you use them correctly. Meta tags are a great way to give your users and Google a better idea of what your website is about. Meta tags can also be helpful if you want to control how your website appears on social media.

When using Meta tags, the key is to ensure they accurately reflect your page’s content. Meta tags that are inaccurate or misleading can do more harm than good. So make sure you’ve done the necessary research before adding meta tags to your website.

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