Creating Meta Tags is one of the simplest ways to optimise your content, and it can lead to some effective improvements in your rankings and traffic.
What are Meta Tags?
If you’re new to SEO, the prospect of creating Meta Tags may seem daunting or confusing, but once you understand what Meta Tags are, and how they can benefit your SEO, you’ll be able to make these simple yet powerful upgrades to the On Page Optimisation for your site.
So, what are Meta Tags? In SEO terms, Meta Tags are hidden, invisible, or coded (hence, meta) snippets of information that describe certain aspects of your website.
The most common Meta Tags are things like the Meta Title or Meta Description, but there are also more advanced ones, such as important meta tags like Content Type, Viewport, Robots, Refresh and Rating.
All these unseen bits of code create certain signals for search engines to use when crawling, indexing, and listing your website in their results pages.
Why are Meta Tags so important for SEO?
Meta Tags are important for SEO for a number of reasons. A meta description summarizes the content of a webpage and appears in search results, influencing click-through rates and indirectly affecting SEO rankings. Here are some of the most basic ways that these powerful little snippets can influence your ranking and traffic results.
• Keyword Optimisation
If you have done keyword research for your business, there are some key places to include the relevant words and phrases you’ve chosen. Although you can simply use your keywords in your content, including them in the appropriate Meta Tags can take your site and pages to the next level of optimisation, which can translate into improved ranking and performance.
• Click Through Rate
Carefully crafted Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions can make a difference to the Click-Through-Rate for any of your pages that are listed in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). This is one occasion where your meta data is visible to human users, rather than just search engine bots and crawlers. This is why it’s important to balance keyword optimisation goals with human-friendly text and skilled marketing copy. Done well, the right Meta Titles And Meta Descriptions will help take your pages from merely ranking to driving traffic, ie enticing the user to click on your link and visit your site.
• Search Intent
Meta Tags can provide information to search engines about the type of content you are sharing on your site. This can play an important role in taking advantage of potential Search Intent benefits that are now an integral part of modern SEO. For example, if you use the right Meta Tag to describe your content as a blog post rather than a product page, you stand a better chance of ranking for Informational Intent search results.
• User Experience
Meta Tags can influence the way that your content is displayed across a range of devices and in different languages. The viewport meta tag plays a crucial role in ensuring mobile responsiveness and improving user experience by configuring page scaling and display across various devices. With the rise of mobile usage, it’s more important than ever to be mobile-friendly and many websites have international users and may want to incorporate multi-lingual options. This is where Meta Tags can help and they allow site owners to create an improved User Experience, something that is also good for SEO.
• Social Media Shares
Meta Tags such as Open Graph data help you to make sure your content is optimised for sharing via social media channels. You can use these settings to ensure that when your content is shared, it looks appealing and uses the words and images you’ve chosen, rather than just the first pieces of copy on the page or a random image that doesn’t represent the content or your brand.
How to create Meta Tags for better rankings and traffic
The two most popular Meta Tags for improving rankings and traffic are the Meta Title and the Meta description. Every web page has its own meta tags that influence its performance in search results. These are also two of the simplest and most easily edited pieces of metadata, especially if you have SEO plugins that facilitate optimisation.
Here’s how to craft effective Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions to benefit your SEO;
• Creating Meta Titles
By default, search engines may use the title of your page as the Meta Title or title tag. This is usually the main headline of your page or post, or the title with a H1 tag.
However, if you’d prefer a different title to be displayed in the Search Engine Results Pages, you can specify different copy by editing your Meta Title directly. This can usually be done in the back end of your website design platform, or it may be possible to install a plugin or extension that allows you to craft the metadata you prefer. If you are familiar with the coding of your site, you can search for the Meta Title and edit it directly.
There are a few recommendations when it comes to crafting your own Meta Titles. Firstly, this is a great place for your main keyword. Secondly, keep the title character count below 60, so that it doesn’t get truncated in the search listings. Finally, make sure it is appealing to human readers, as a compelling title can play a big part in whether or not the user will click through to your site.
• Creating Meta Descriptions
Like Meta Titles, if you don’t specify a Meta Description tag, search engines may create their own, using a snippet from your content to display below the title in the search listings. You may find that the one selected by default is suitable, but it’s likely that you’ll want to make the most of this opportunity to use optimised copy that includes your keyword theme and also entices users to click through to your site.
The way to specify your own Meta Description is usually the same practice as editing Meta Titles, ie in the back end, via a plugin/extension, or directly in the site’s source code.
The recommendations for creating Meta Descriptions are also similar to the above guidelines for Meta Titles, except you have a few more characters to play with, around 105 is the usual limit. Although the description may appear to be another opportunity for including your keyword, it’s preferable to use a variation in order to avoid ‘keyword stuffing’ which can harm your SEO. It’s also a good idea to include a specific Call To Action that will encourage users to click your link and visit your site. Ideally, you would want to customise these tags for all pages, so as to avoid having duplicate meta descriptions.
Meta Tags may seem to be the complex, hidden pieces of a website using strange language that only bots and tech experts understand. But if you stick to the basics to begin with, you can make some simple changes to your metadata that could make a world of difference to your rankings, your traffic, and your business success.
Meta Tag Mistakes and Best Practices
Here are the common meta tag mistakes to avoid and best practices to follow:
- Duplicate Meta Tags: Having duplicate meta tags on multiple pages can confuse search engines and water down your SEO. Make sure each page has unique meta tags that describes its content.
- Missing Meta Tags: Not having essential meta tags can hurt your SEO. Make sure to have all necessary meta tags on each page to give search engines the information they need.
- Incorrect Syntax: Using incorrect syntax can prevent search engines from reading your meta tags properly. Always use the right syntax and formatting to make your tags work.
- Keyword Stuffing: Stuffing your meta tags with keywords can be seen as spammy by search engines and hurt your SEO. Instead, use descriptive and unique meta tags that summarise the content of each page.
- Descriptive and Unique Meta Tags: Crafting descriptive and unique meta tags helps search engines understand your content better and increases your chances of ranking higher. Make sure each meta tag is tailored to the page content.
Meta Tags for Mobile and Accessibility
As well as prioritising the main meta tags for SEO, with mobile-friendliness and accessibility ever more important, you should also optimise your meta tags for these. Here are some:
- Meta Viewport Tag: The meta viewport tag is important for making your website mobile-friendly and responsive. By setting the viewport width to the device width, you can make sure your content scales correctly on different screen sizes.
- Robots Meta Tag: Use the robots meta tag to control how search engines crawl and index your mobile website. This can help you manage duplicate content and make sure search engines prioritise the right version of your site.
- Alternate Meta Tag: If you have different versions of a page, such as mobile or print version, use the alternate meta tag to specify these alternatives. This helps search engines understand the relationship between these versions and index them properly.
- Schema Markup for Accessibility: Using schema markup to provide additional context and information about your website’s content can also include details about accessibility features. This can help search engines understand your site’s accessibility and improve your visibility in search results.
Start Optimising Meta Tags
Meta tags are part of search engine optimisation and optimising them can improve your website’s visibility, crawlability and overall ranking in search engine results pages. Follow the tips and best practices above and make sure your meta tags are optimised to the max.
Stay updated with the latest meta tags and schema markup and monitor and adjust your meta tags to make sure they work for your website.