On-page optimization plays a very crucial role in SEO and meta tags are small, but an important part of it. In this blog post, we will discuss the importance of meta tags and why those are required to optimize properly.
What are Meta Tags?
Meta tags are useful to give information about the webpages to search engines i.e. you can tell search engines through meta tags what the page is all about. They are usually added to the head section of the webpage and can be seen in the source code. Below snapshot of the source code shows the meta tags:
Types of Meta Tags
We will only focus on those tags here which are considered important from an SEO perspective.
- Title tag
- Meta Description
- Meta Keywords
Let’s discuss the above three one by one.
Title Tag: This is a very important tag as it will give users information about the content in the search engine result page. This can be an important factor for the users to decide whether to click it or not, so always make sure to use relevant and optimized titles for your webpages. The added title tag can be seen in the source code of the webpage or it can be seen at the top of the browser as shown in the below snapshot:
Description Meta Tag: The information which we add in this tag is helpful to generate a good snippet and helps in conveying what the page is all about. The added info can appear in SERP, so it is always imperative to write a convincing meta tag. Make sure to include a few keywords in that and it should be relevant to the webpage for which you are adding it.
Keyword Meta Tag: Adding target keywords in keyword meta tag was having a lot of weightage in the past, but those days are gone now. Over time this has lost its shine and it’s obsolete now, but that doesn’t mean that adding these may hurt the performance of the webpage i.e. there is no harm in adding the keywords in keyword meta tag. It will be your decision i.e. if you want to add then add, they will have little or no ranking benefits.
Meta tags are very useful in signaling search engines what the page is all about. Always make sure to add unique, relevant and compelling meta tags to your web pages.