A Beginner's Guide to Meta Tags for SEO

A Beginner's Guide to Meta Tags for SEO

To create an effective search engine optimization strategy, you need to understand the two main pillars of SEO: off-page SEO and on-page SEO / technical SEO. While off-page SEO focuses on building your website's credibility and relationship with other websites through high-quality backlinks, on-page SEO, or technical SEO, is about optimizing your website's content to rank in search engine results (SERPs). Some of the more technical on-page items that fall into this category include keywords, canonical tags, and meta tags. In this guide, we'll walk you through SEO basics and best practices for using meta tags to optimize your website. You will also learn how to help search engines recognize your website and increase its ranking, along with other SEO tips.

What are meta tags?

The term "meta" means "metadata", i.e. data about data. Meta tags provide information about your website and directly affect how search engines see your website. Most elements of meta tags benefit search engines like Googlebot and other web crawlers. Meta tags are added to a document's HTML code to help search engines understand more information about the page. They are also used to rate content or pages. Title tags and meta descriptions appear in search results. We will provide an overview of the following meta tags:

Title tags

Meta descriptions

Robot meta tag

Viewport meta tags

What is a title tag?

The title tag tells search engines what title you want to appear in the SERPs. It can be a simplified sentence of the title that appears on the website. Including a title tag for your website makes it easier for search engine crawlers to read, classify, and rank your content. You've probably seen the title tag before. Below is how the title tag looks in Google search results and on the web.

Tips and tricks for tagging subtitles

The title tag is one of the most important meta tags because it is visible to search engines and people who use the internet. This is your first chance to catch the searcher's attention. This could be the information that convinces someone to click through to your website.

Follow these tips to help you create creative and descriptive page titles:

Add a title tag for each web page

Avoid long headlines

Less than 60 characters is best

Avoid generic and vague titles, such as "Home" for the home page

Use nouns or sentence cases Match the search intent

Avoid clickbait headlines Include target words as needed Create a separate title tag for each page on your site Our On Page SEO Checker can also help optimize your title tag. Add a URL to make sure your target keyword is in the title tag and the title is the same as in the search results.

What is a meta description?

A meta description summarizes the content of a web page for search engines and Internet users. You can find it under the title tag on the search engine results page.

Tips and Tricks for Meta Descriptions

Although meta descriptions are not part of Google's ranking algorithm, they are still included as snippets in Google search results to allow people to easily access to search results. Think of meta descriptions not as a ranking factor, but as a way to increase your click-through rate (CTR). Don't forget to add creative descriptions with targeted keywords for your homepage, internal pages and blog posts. Use these best practices to get effective,

click-worthy meta descriptions:

Keep it under 160 characters

Create a separate summary for each page

Avoid duplicate meta descriptions on your site

Use the case of the sentence

Be precise, descriptive and concise

Match the search intent

Only enter your target keyword where it makes sense

What is Robots Meta Tag?

Robot meta tags are additional values ​​or parameters placed in HTML tags. Robot meta tags instruct search engines when you want them to crawl or index parts of your website. They can be placed separately or together (comma-separated) in content properties. By default, all pages and links you create on your site are indexed by search engines and crawlers.

Some common parameters are:
Index: Instructs the web crawler to index the page. When a page is indexed, it is visible to search engine users. If you don't add anything to your code, it will be the default.
No index: Tells search engines not to index the web page, which means the page will not appear on the search results page.
Next: This allows search engines to follow links you have placed on your web pages and redirect the reader to other pages. This is also the default if you haven't added any parameters to the source code.
No follow: Tells search engine robots not to crawl links on the page and not to approve links. Some sites use it as a safety net to let search engines know that they are not using unsolicited linking techniques.
No archive: Prevents search engines from caching or viewing the page. Here is a robot meta tag that tells web crawlers not to index the page.

Robot Meta Tag Tips and Tricks
The robot meta tag determines how Google crawls the pages on your website. We want to do this to avoid penalties for duplicate content.
Here are some other cases where you can use the no follow tag:
If your site's comments section isn't revised, you can prevent commenters from receiving backlinks from your site by adding a no follow tag to your page.
You can add the nofollow tag to widgets and infographics from other sites that aren't fully supported.
You can add the nofollow tag to any link on your site that you don't want Google verified.
If you need technical assistance and additional technical information like HTTPS scanning or security, please use our SEO toolkit. Check your website with over 60 technical and on-site SEO reviews.

It also identifies the main issues that need to be addressed before you can start working on your website to make money.

What is the viewport meta tag?

To understand this section, we must first define the window. In its simplest form, a viewport is a user-visible area of ​​a web page. This can vary depending on where someone is viewing your content, with the two common options being laptops or mobile devices. With 48.6% of mobile web searches, the viewport meta tag has become one of the top SEO practices. Web developers use it to manage the size and scope of content and make websites mobile-friendly. Then use the viewport meta tag to instruct browsers such as Chrome and Firefox to display web pages in different screen sizes such as desktop, tablet, and mobile.

Meta view port Tag Tips and Tips

If your website visitors try to access your website via mobile and you only have the desktop version, they will probably leave your website. You can't blame them because they are difficult to navigate and read. However, it has a higher bounce rate, a negative sign for Google, and a lower search ranking.

What's the best advice on this particular meta tag?

Improve your user experience by making your site mobile-friendly. Improve Your Meta Tags Now SEO has many elements, but you don't need to be an expert to understand and improve your website's meta tags. Marketers like you can use tools like SEO Checker to check your site's SEO status and gather information about your competitors. It also includes recommendations that you can implement immediately.