Introduction
Meta tags are text snippets that describe the content of a page; meta tags do not appear on the page itself, but only in the page’s source code. Meta tags are short summaries of content that help search engines understand what a web page is about.
In summary, Meta tags are important for all search engines since they exist in the HTML code of a website page and inform the search engine about the page’s content. For all search engines, they are the initial point of contact and the first impression.
Importance of Meta Tags
Meta tags are critical in establishing a web page’s relevancy to search engines. They give crucial information about the content and purpose of a page to search engine crawlers. While there are several sorts of meta tags, this article focuses on the “general information” meta tag.
The general information meta tag provides a brief overview of your page and is frequently displayed as a snippet in search results. Creating a captivating and keyword-rich general information meta tag can have a major influence on your website’s Google visibility. You may attract consumers to click on your website by deliberately optimizing this meta tag, resulting in more organic traffic and, eventually, higher rankings.
The Use of Meta Tags:
Meta tags are widely used in all aspects of digital marketing, but they play a critical role in SEO (search engine optimization).
The usage of title tags and meta descriptions, in particular, is essential.
Search engines display these tags as a little text item in the search results. Make sure that the meta tags on your website are unique for each page and that they are as appealing as practical. Both the title and description tags must encourage a visitor to click on the link in the search results.
Some Important Meta Tags and its Use:
- Meta Keywords: Meta keywords were formerly used to define relevant keywords for search engines to index the page. However, due to spammers’ abuse of this tag, most search engines now disregard it. Meta keywords are often not required in current webpages.
- Meta Robots: The meta robots tag specifies how search engines index and display a website. It can be used to define whether or not the page should be indexed, whether or not to follow links on the page, and whether or not to display snippets in search results..
- Meta Viewport: On mobile devices, the meta viewport element is used to modify the viewport parameters and layout. It guarantees that web pages show correctly on various screen sizes and resolutions.
- Open Graph Meta Tags: When a website is shared, Open Graph meta tags are utilised to offer structured data to social networking networks. They provide the title, description, image, and URL that will be displayed when a link is shared on social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.
- Canonical Tag: When there are many versions of a web page accessible, the canonical tag is used to designate the preferable version. It assists search engines in avoiding duplicate content problems and consolidating ranking signals to a single URL.
- Alternative text Alt Tag: Alt text provides something for screen readers to read aloud to visually impaired people, assists search engine bots in understanding picture contents, and may show on a webpage when an image fails to load.
- Header tags: Websites employ header tags, commonly referred to as heading tags, to distinguish between headings and subheadings. They are numbered H1 through H6, with the title appearing on most of the H1s.
- Meta name author: <Meta Name = “author”
When utilized in this manner, it is simple to identify the correct person in charge of a web page. - Meta name keywords: Meta keywords are meta tags that you may use to provide extra information about the content of a website to search engines. They are contained in the HTML source code of a webpage and are not visible to users.
- Meta name reply-to: By including your webmaster’s email address in the REPLY-TO tag, you can advise people how to contact the correct person in your organization who is in charge of your website. Because of spam robots that capture email addresses, this tag is no longer utilized.
- Meta equiv cache-control: The meta cache control element allows Web publishers to specify how caches should treat their content.
- Meta equiv content-type: <meta http-equiv=”Content-Type”>
It specifies the character encoding in the HTML page. It specifies the HTTP header content type. - Meta equiv cookie: The Meta Set-Cookie function allows you to save a variable (small file) in the client web browser (as a browser cookie) for the duration of the session or for a set time period.
- Meta equiv MS theme: If you wanted Windows XP to change the XP theme to your website, use the MS Theme Compatible tag.
- Meta equiv pics-label: Labels (metadata) can be connected with Internet content using the PICS (Platform Independent Contact Rating Scheme) specification.
- Meta equiv refresh: Meta refresh is a means of telling a web browser to automatically refresh the current web page or frame after a specified time interval, which is accomplished by using an HTML meta element with the http-equiv parameter set to ” refresh ” and a content parameter specifying the time interval in seconds.
- Meta equiv script-type: The http-equiv attribute generates an HTTP header for the content attribute’s information or value.
- Meta data Dublin Core: Dublin Core is an international metadata standard that comprises 15 metadata (data that describes data) keywords. It is technically known as the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set.
- Meta tag Rel = no follow: When you apply a “no follow” metatag to a webpage, search engines are prevented from indexing the links on that page. This also implies that any ranking authority the page has on search engine results pages will not be passed on to the pages it links to.
- Miscellaneous Meta Tags: Meta tags are used by search engines and other web crawlers to store information about a page that does not need to be shown. They are often used to provide search engines with a brief summary of the page as well as its key keywords.
Meta name robots tag: The robots meta element is an HTML tag that appears in the page’s head tag and contains instructions for bots. It, like the robots.txt file, instructs search engine crawlers whether or not to index a page.
These are only a few instances of meta tags and their applications. Other meta tags may be used by different websites depending on their individual needs or to offer more information to search engines and other services.