People who are new in the online industry are often lost when they hear the term “meta tag.” While it is a term that you commonly encounter in website building, many still do not understand why it is used and how to effectively use it. In this post, we will help you familiarize yourself with this term, and understand the role it plays in the SEO process.
What are meta tags?
Meta tags are one of the most basic elements of search engine optimization (SEO). They are a very important factor in the online world, and a “must to know” for every website developer and SEO practitioner, whether you’re specializing in search engine optimisation Perth or Los Angeles.
These tags provide all the basic information that help tell the search engines what your web page is about, who created it, and when did you create it. It looks like a snippet of text that describes your website. But unlike the common tags you see on a blogpost, these tags don’t appear on the website. They are hidden, and only visible to search engines.
Meta tags are located at the top or head of your html’s page. And they look something like this:
<head>Your meta tag is here</head>
Parts of a Meta Tag
Meta tags have different parts, and in this section, we will talk about the three major parts that are worth knowing about. These three things are very important in the process of optimization.
- Title – The title tag is the text that you see at the top of your browser. It’s one of the most important tags in all HTML documents as it displays the title of your web page. It typically looks like this:
<title>Your title here</title>
- Description – The description tag is where you put your website’s brief summary. The summary contains necessary information of what your website is about or what you offer. It typically looks something like this:
<meta name=”description” content=”Your website’s brief summary”/>
- Keywords – The keyword tag contains all the words you think are relevant to your website. It’s a very important tag as it helps you rank in the search engines. It looks something like this:
<meta tag=”keywords” content=”Your keywords here, which are separated by a comma”/>
When building your own website, it’s very crucial to consider these three major parts. Although meta tags are no longer frequently used these days, they are still considered a very crucial element in any site’s SEO. Meta tags are read by search engines, and are still used as a key factor to figure out if your page is worth displaying on the top of the SERPs.