Introduction

Meta tags are the foundation of SEO, and the first thing you’ll find yourself setting up when building a web page.

Without meta tags, you can’t reach readers organically.

It doesn’t take much time to generate meta tags, but it’s more important than you might think.

What are Meta Tags?

Meta tags are a type of HTML tag that provides search engines with information about a website page.

Let’s take a look at the basic elements.

The title and description tags make up almost the entire entry.

Title and description tags are the two most-used tags for SEO purposes, but SEO isn’t the only part of digital marketing.

Advanced digital marketing requires the use of even more tags that improve page rank and overall user experience.

How Meta Tags Affect Brand Image and Click-Through Rates

You absolutely can judge a book by its cover. It’s what covers are designed for.

Your title and meta description tag create the cover for your web page. They’re your first impression on most visitors.

It’s not just about search engines, but how we view the Internet.

Meta Tag Best Practices

There are a TON of different HTML tags that can be used on a web page. We’re only going to focus on a handful of significant tags.

• Title Tags

  It’s not technically a meta tag, but it shows up in the header and is used as one.

  As of July 2017, the character limits for title tags in Google search results are 78 on mobile devices and 70 on a desktop.

  However, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should use all those characters, and 60 is the generally recommended limit.

  Long-tail keywords make a difference.

• Image Tags

  Like title tags, Image tags aren’t labeled “meta.”

  But they’re clearly used by search engines, link aggregators, and other sites to identify your site.

• Description Meta Tags

  A meta description tag gives you a chance to provide an overview of the page’s content.

  They’re limited to around 160 characters and aren’t directly tied to Google’s search algorithms at all!

  Once again, the reason you need description tags is to improve the user experience.

• Robots Noindex and Nofollow Meta Tags

  Robot meta tags aren’t always necessary.

  By default, all of the pages and links you create on your website are indexed as ‘follow’ by search bots and web crawlers.

  Whenever you want to redirect them, you’ll need a robot meta tag.

• Keyword Meta Tags

  Keyword tags aren’t used by search algorithms to determine search ranking.

  Keyword tags and categories can help Google determine which page on your site should rank for a search.

  Keywords also provide a big-picture overview of how many pages you have for each keyword.

• Viewport tags

  You don’t spend much time thinking about viewports, but they’re especially important in today’s mobile-first world of search.

  On mobile devices, pages are shown in a popup window called a viewport that extends past the device’s border.

Conclusion

Meta tags are a basic part of HTML — and can impact SEO. Back in the early days of the internet, they were a signaling factor for search engines to understand what content is on a page. Search engines are incentivized to provide the best search results possible, so meta tags are less important. While less metadata is used, it’s still the first impression you’ll make on both robots and people.