If you are anyhow related to SEO, you have heard about meta tags. Let us find out more about the types and their functions. Meta-tags’ task is to give the search engine information about a particular web page it needs. The content of the meta tags is inaccessible to visitors since info about them is hidden.
The days when meta tags played the most crucial role in organic SERP and SEO are gone. The intention of modern meta tags is different. Their optimization is more related to the internal and technical improvement of a web platform.
Types & Functions
To evaluate the significance of meta tags in SEO, the most effective way is to understand their main functions for a web page. Here are more details on the majority of meta tags:
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The title (some specialists even state that it is not even a meta tag in its form) is responsible for naming pages. Based on the rules from search engines, the title should be around 60-70 characters, and it should clearly tell about what a page is. When creating a title, it is necessary to introduce the main keywords in it carefully. The meta title is what the search engine will show in the snippet. Thus, the better it is, the higher are the chances that users will pay attention to your link in the SERP;
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The description should provide a bit more details about the content. Do not try to cheat the search engine. If the MD does not coincide with the info on the page, the search engine will display another part of the text, which is not always for your benefit;
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The keywords meta-tag, according to the statement of Google, does not affect ranking since the year 2019. However, a lot of sites are still incorporating it;
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The viewport meta tag is the one that tells the search engine about how a page is adapted for mobile devices. Thus, the use of this meta tag contributes to the responsive design of a site;
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The alt meta tag is the alternative image text. In general, every search engine recommends filling in these tags correctly. Besides, proper optimization of these tags can even attract additional organic traffic from the search engine;
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The canonical meta tag is a necessary tool to deal with duplicate content that can appear for several reasons, for instance, a version of a page for print. Thanks to this tag, the search engine will understand which of the pages a site owner would like to be crawled and displayed;
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The robots meta tag is the one that informs the search engine about pages that should be displayed or indexed. The most commonly used are the attributes “index/noindex” and “follow/nofollow”;
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The hreflang tag is essential for websites with several language versions. It is used to inform the search engine which version should be shown to a user from a particular country, which helps to decrease the bounce rate considerably.
All in all, the wise use of meta tags (the above ones and some more that have not been mentioned) does not impact the site ranking directly. However, if they are optimized properly, this will undeniably have a positive effect.
