A Comprehensive Guide to SEO Meta Tags

SEO Meta Tags act as the starter of SEO training. At the top of any page in the header, there lie meta tags. People always hear about the bad side of meta tags. But there are some advantageous meta tags too. Let us know about it comprehensively. 

What are Meta Tags?

Meta Tags are used in webpage to obtain information about the page in the HTML of a document. This information is called ‘metadata’. If meta tags do not display on the page itself, then the search engines and web crawlers can read it. 

Reputed search engines use metadata from meta tags to understand the extra information of a webpage. The meta tags are generally used to display snippets in search results and for ranking purposes. <title> and <description> are elements that are included in meta tags.

Guidance on Meta Tags

Even today, meta tags matter a lot. If anyone wants to rank higher in search, then the meta tags are earnestly needed to assist high-quality content in focusing on user satisfaction. 

The best usage of meta tags is to stick to the core minimum. One should not add excess meta tags. That will take immense code space. 

This content has three divisions of meta tags: Good, Indifferent, and Bad meta tags. Services like Utah SEO services can assist a lot in deriving the best meta tags for web pages.

Also Read: Different Types of SEOS You Need To Know

Good Meta Tags

Good meta tags should be on every page. But it is small in amount. There are only a few ones that are needed the most. They are:

Meta content-type:

This kind of tag is used to declare the character set for the webpage and is needed on every page. If one skips it, then it can affect the way of a page rendering on the browser. examples of such meta tags are:

<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=utf-8″ />

<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1″>

Viewport:

Since the advent of mobiles, the specification of viewport has been an important criterion. Without a viewport, one will have a poor mobile experience. The standard tag is:

<meta name=viewport content=”width=device-width, initial-scale=1″>

Title: 

Titles are headers and contain information that is very useful to SEO. A unique title tag on every page describes the page.

Meta description: 

The Meta description meta tag is used to elaborate the page to surfers as they read through SERPs. But this tag does not manipulate ranking. Regardless, it is important. 

Indifferent Meta Tags

The indifferent meta tags are used in certain circumstances. It is not a necessity. If you can go without them, then please do. There are many indifferent meta tags. Some important ones are given.

Keywords: 

Keyword meta tags belong to the ‘indifferent’ group. Though no good SEO will support this tag, there is a slight possibility of benefits from this.

Geo:

Geo meta tags are supported by Bing but not Google. There are three types: Placename, position, and region. 

<META NAME=”geo.position” CONTENT=”latitude; longitude”>

<META NAME=”geo.placename” CONTENT=”Place Name”>

<META NAME=”geo.region” CONTENT=”Country Subdivision Code”>

Googlebot:

Googlebot is used to instruct specific bots like ‘noodp’ and ‘noydir’. Although search engines are well-equipped to handle these things, if you want, you can use them. 

Robots:

Robot meta tags are not much necessity. But if one doesn’t add it, they read that as ‘index, follow’. When one wants to change one of the commands, one has to add meta robots. This robot meta tag should be used:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex” />

Bad Meta Tags

Nothing bad will happen if one uses a bad meta tag on the site. It’s just that they are a waste of space. Bad meta tags are the most abundant. Some of them are:

Rating:

Rating tag is used to estimate the maturity rate of content. 

Author or Web author:

Web author meta tag is used to name the author of the page. It is not necessary on the page.

Expiration and Date:

‘Expiration’ is used to notify when the page expires. ‘Date’ is used to specify the date the page was made. 

Distribution:

The distribution meta tag is used to manipulate who can access the document, which is typically set as ‘global’.

Also Read: Steer Clear From 5 Most Common Backlink Myth

Conclusion:

Reaching the end of the content, it is sure that we have learned a lot about meta tags. This guidance will show us the right direction to make correct decisions. Meta tags do not cause any harm to a page but take extra space.