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What Are Meta Tags? 6 Steps to Optimise Them for SEO!

Last updated: Jan 09, 2025

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Meta tags are HTML elements used to inform both search engines and users about the content of a web page. It is a very important element that has direct and indirect influences on SEO performance.

Want to know more about what meta tags are, their types, and how to optimise them for SEO? Read the article below to the end!

What Are Meta Tags?

Meta tags are the HTML element that provides information about your webpage content to both search engines and users. These tags are essential to most search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yandex, and more.

Meta tags are usually added within the <head> section of an HTML document and include the metadata such as title, keyword, and description.

Overall, meta tags create the audience's first impression of your webpage. By adding meta tags on your webpage, you can customise how your metadata appears in search results and attract the audiences to visit your webpage.

5 Types of Meta Tags

There are some types of meta tags that you can build on your website, each type has a unique function to make your webpage effectively indexed and understood by search engines. The types of meta tags include:

1. Meta Title Tag

The meta title is what's displayed on the search engine results page (SERP) as the title of your web page. Each page in the search engine has a different unique title. The title is usually around 50-60 characters long, including the main keyword.

The title tag is an HTML element that contains a meta title of the web page that helps the search engine understand what your web page content is about. Title tags are the most important tag to optimise as they can have a direct impact on your search ranking. Here is the syntax for the meta title tag:

<title>7 Recommendations Best Hotel in London</title>

2. Meta Description Tag

Figure 1: The example of meta description.

A meta description tag is an HTML element that contains a meta description of the web page. Meta description itself is the short piece of summary about what your web page contains. A meta description is usually written between 150-160 characters.

Like the meta title, the meta description is the first thing the audience will look at before deciding whether or not to click on your web link. Meta description also helps search engines to understand your content and index your page better.

The meta description tag is also located within the head section of HTML and here how it looks like:

<head>

<meta name=”description” content=”meta descriptiontext.” />

Although meta description isn't an official Google ranking factor, it can indirectly help your rankings. This is because meta descriptions can make people interested to click through your page from SERP, which can improve search engine rankings.

3. Meta Keywords Tag

Meta keyword is the targeted word or phrases related to the content, these tags can help search engines to understand the web page topic.

The meta keyword tag is used to list the relevant keywords on your web page content. Here is how the meta keyword tag looks in HTML:

<meta name=”keywords” content =”keyword1, keyword2”>

However, it should be noted that Google is no longer using the meta keyword tag for ranking purposes. This decision was made because the meta keywords were often misused in the past, particularly through practices like keyword stuffing.

4. Meta Robot Tag

Meta robot tag is the element on HTML that tells search engine crawlers whether or not to index the page. This meta robot tag is also located in the "head" section of the HTML code.

Automatically, the search engine will follow and index all pages. Therefore, you don't need to add all your web pages with the meta robot tag, you can just add on the special page you don't want to include for indexing and links followed by crawlers.

The robot.txt meta tag is divided into four important functions:

Follow, this tag is used to instruct the crawlers to follow all the links on the website.
Nofollow, opposite to follow, this tag is used to instruct the crawlers not to follow the page and any link within the webpage.
Index, this tag instructs the crawlers to index the page
Noindex, this tag instructs the crawlers not to index the web page.

5. Open Graph Tag

Figure 2: Example of Open Graph meta tags, how your article is displayed when shared on social media.

Open graph tag is the HTML element that can help you control how your content will appear when it is shared on social media platforms. You can customize how you want your website snippet to appear including custom titles, descriptions, images, and other details.

An open graph will help show the images and brief post descriptions automatically when your content is shared. Here is a syntax for an open graph meta tag example:

<meta name=”og:title” content=”Page/Post Title”>

Why Are Meta Tags Important?

As you know, search engines do not read all the aspects of your web page as humans do. Search engines will rely on structured data on HTML code and then process it with complex algorithms to become information of the webpage content.

Meta tags in SEO play a crucial role because they are the elements on the headers of web pages. That's why search engine bots will easily understand meta tags and compare them to user's queries if they are written properly.

Google will use meta tags as the first consideration to see content relevance which will affect website rankings. The best meta tags for SEO are the meta tags that contain clear, relevant and compelling information about the content.

How to Optimise Meta Tags for SEO

After understanding meta tags, their type and SEO tag's importance now you will learn how to make them optimise for search engines. Here are the best practices on how to create meta tags that SEO friendly for your website:

1. Keep Your Meta Title and Description Concise

The first thing to pay attention to is keeping your meta title and description as concise as possible. The audience is more like to-the-point information, so it's better to keep your meta title short, clear, and informative.

For meta description you need to make sure it contains the summary of your content and keep it around 155-160 characters, this can help you to avoid truncated meta description by Google.

The concise title or description will make it easier for both the audience and search engine to understand your content.

2. Use Keyword on Meta Title and Description

Next, you should include your targeted keyword in the meta description and title. The targeted keyword that is relevant and has a high volume search will attract more visitors from SERP.

This also can help your website to be shown and ranked on the relevant query search. Pro tip: remember to use keywords naturally and avoid stuffing.

3. Create an Engaging Meta Title and Description

It's important to remember that your title and description are the first things users will see on your page. So, it's really important to create an engaging title and description to attract your audience and get them to click, visit and read your content.

On top of that, a well-written description and title will also help search engines find your content relevant to search queries, which increases the chance of ranking higher.

4. Include CTA on the Meta Description

Call-to-action (CTA) is an important aspect to include in your meta description. A good CTA will motivate your audience to take the next action or click your meta title. You can use clear and engaging CTA such as:

Learn about…
Explore.., find.., know.., discover..
View product details here!
Get started!
Find here!
Read more here!

5. Choose an Appropriate Attribute for Robot Tag

As explained earlier, robot tags can help you inform search engine crawlers whether or not to index your page. By selecting the appropriate robot tag attribute, you can control how search engines interact with your site, improve crawl efficiency, and also help direct SEO to the most valuable pages.

6. Ensure Open Graph Accuracy and Relevance

Last but not least, you should make sure that your open graph is accurate and relevant in order to optimise its benefits on the social media platform. Check your Open Graph site regularly and make improvements if there are updates or a new trend.

You can also create customisation as you like, for example:

Adding the text <meta property="og:image" content="https://yourweb.com/images/product.jpg" />
Adding the link <meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/organic-skincare-products" />

Meta tags are important elements for your websites. Therefore, you need to make sure that yours are set up properly to help search engines be able to understand, index, and display your content.

Creating a great meta tag is not an easy job, it needs a lot of effort and consistency. Some issues also commonly happen thus you need to ensure that you do audits on your meta tags regularly. If you're feeling overwhelmed when creating meta tags or need professional help to create a great one, you can rely on SEO Services by cmlabs.

At cmlabs, our professional and experienced team will help you create meta tags that are not only optimised for SEO but also attractive to your audience. Increase your organic traffic, website ranking, and sales with well-optimised meta tags.

We also provide SEO Writing Services that can create powerful, SEO-friendly meta tags that will help your site rank higher. Contact our marketing team now for a free consultation!

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