Meta tags are among the foundational technical aspects of SEO. Let’s learn how to use, optimize and refine them for Google.
They are basically the HTML snippets of code that instruct the search engine about the content contained in a web page. They mark up important elements of a web page for SEO.
If you are familiar with the process of website development, you will know how important they are for making a semantic website. Using them allows you to accurately describe and display what is your website about.
Unlike other pieces of content on your website, meta content is read by the browser and the search engine only. It is inserted in the source code of the website and can’t be seen by the users directly. You can look at the meta content in this page as shown below.
Why are Meta Tags important?
These tags carry out a number of tasks for your website. We have made a brief list below.
- They instruct the browser to show critical parameters such as “meta description”, “meta title” etc.
- They help in increasing the SEO proficiency of your website as the search engines crawl them.
- You can customize them to add special features such as link previews and author names.
- Meta content also helps the user to identify the content by reading from the browser.
- They lend a semantic hierarchy to the website’s code by adding highlighted content.
- Websites without meta tags find it very hard to get a suitable rank on Google SERPs.
Some of the Google Meta Tags
Google has a set of specific meta content tags that it understands. You can include these in your website to increase its SEO score.
- Meta Description
- Title Tag
- Robots Tag ( <meta name = “robots”>)
- Meta Content Type Tag
- Viewport Tag
You can find the complete list of Google meta preferences here.
How to implement Meta Tags?
Usually, these tags are implemented by web developers when they make the website, but you can add them on your own too. You can use the meta tags generator tools in order to make them. After that, you just have to include these meta tags inside the <head> of your website.
You can see the search engine preview of our website above.
If you use a WordPress website, you can add these tags using Yoast or similar plugin. Yoast has inbuilt features for managing meta tags for pages, therefore, that they rank accordingly.
If your website is not based on WordPress, you can add meta tags manually in the software that you use for website development. You can use the SEOptimer Tool to create meta tags automatically. Later, you can copy the code snippets and simply add them to the HTML code of your website.
If you have Microsoft Visual Studio, you can add these directly using the tool.
Conclusion
Meta tags have an irreplaceable aspect of websites. You must use them to gain better SEO results and lend a structure to your HTML code. You can not only use them for SEO, but also for increasing how your website is rendered to the user.
James writes SEO/SMO articles for businesses that want to see their Google search rankings surge His articles have appeared in a number of Websites. He contributes articles about SEO/SMO techniques regularly.