Meta Tags - How Google Meta Tags Affect SEO

Meta tags are snippets of text that describe the content of a page. The meta tags do not appear on the page itself, but only in the source code of the page. They are essentially small content descriptions that tell search engines what a web page is about.


Meta tag definition: What are meta tags?

The only difference between tags you can see (for example, on a blog post) and tags you can't see is location: meta tags only exist in HTML, usually in the "head" of the page, and are therefore only visible to search engines (and to people who know where and how to search). The "meta" stands for "metadata" – that's the kind of data these tags provide – data about the data on your page.


Do meta tags help with SEO?

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Yes, meta tags are essential in search engine optimization - but not all and not always. One of the goals of this post is to explain which meta tags can potentially help your SEO rankings and which have largely fallen out of use.


If you want to find out if a particular page uses meta tags, just right-click anywhere on the page and select "Show Page Source".


In Chrome, a new tab opens (in Firefox it's a pop-up window). The top part or "head" of the page is the area where the meta tags should be located.


Different types of meta tags

There are four main types of meta tags that you should know about, and we're going to talk about them all here. Some are not as useful as they once were. Others are worth using regularly and will most likely increase your traffic by letting Google know who you are and what you offer. (There are more than four types of meta tags, but some are less common or not relevant for beginners).



The four types we will discuss here are:



  • Meta Keyword Attribute – A set of keywords that you consider relevant to the page in question.

  • Title Tag – This is the text you see at the top of your browser. Search engines consider this text to be the "title" of your page.

  • Meta Description- A brief description of the page.

  • Meta Robots (Robots.txt) - A clue for search engine crawlers (robots or "bots") on what to do with the page.


Meta Keywords Attribute

Meta keywords are an example of a meta tag that doesn't make much sense to use these days. Years ago, the meta keyword tags may have been useful, but not anymore.


Remember the time in kindergarten when your teacher gave you a stern look and said, "If you don't stop using the crayons while I'm talking, I'll take them away from you," and you didn't listen, and to your shock, they were actually taken away? That's kind of what Google did with meta keywords.


Years ago, marketers eager for page views inserted keywords into their code that had nothing to do with their pages to steal traffic from the more popular sites, the pages that actually dealt with Lindsay Lohan, or whoever was in vogue. This has been called "keyword stuffing". Google eventually discovered this and finally decided to devalue the tool. Nowadays, Google no longer uses meta keywords in its ranking algorithm at all because they are too easy to abuse.


Title Tag

Title tags, on the other hand, are the most important of all the meta tags discussed here. These tags have a real impact on search ranking and, perhaps just as importantly, they are the only tags we discuss here that are visible to the average user. You can find them at the top of your browser (for organic search pages or for PPC landing pages).


Meta Title Tag

This is especially useful if you want to give the page a primary title for the user, but want to clarify or simplify this information for SEO purposes and for the user who moves multiple tabs back and forth on their desktop.


Meta Description                                              

The meta description is a useful meta tag because it very easily explains to search engines and (sometimes) searchers themselves what your page is about. For example, let's say you google for the term "meta keywords." You might come across the following results:


It's important to note that the meta description tag doesn't always appear in the results of a Google search, because Google often selects a snippet of text from the page itself. Google has also stated that keywords in meta descriptions don't affect your ranking. However, a meaningful meta description tag can trick searchers into clicking through from the SERP to your site, especially if the description includes the keywords they searched for. And a high click-through rate in the SERP could indirectly improve your ranking.


Google's reasons are somewhat mysterious, but their actions speak for themselves: meta keywords no longer play a big role, but meta descriptions do.


Meta Robots Attribute

With this attribute, you tell the search engines what to do with your pages:


index/no index - This tells the search engines whether your page should be displayed in the search results or not.

follow/nofollow - This tells the search engines what to do with your page.


Summary:

We talked about the ways meta tags can have a very real impact on search engine marketing. Summarized:


The title tag alone can affect your search engine ranking

Meta descriptions can encourage users to visit your website

The meta description can serve as "organic ad text"

Meta keywords are outdated on most search engines