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Screenshot from search for [computers], Google, October 2022<\/span><\/div>\nGetting Started With Meta Tags<\/h2>\n
Meta tags are one of the first things you\u2019ll see in a site audit report<\/a>. They appear in the header above the page content and provide important information about a page.<\/p>\n The first step in understanding what meta tags do is to know why you\u2019d use them.<\/p>\n You might want to include certain words in the description of your product or service, such as price range, features, size, etc., and you could use the keywords meta tag to help describe that.<\/p>\n Or maybe you want to let people know where your site is located, like a city, state, or country. You could use the location meta tag.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re writing a blog post, you might want to add a category meta tag to help others find it.<\/p>\n These are just a few examples of what meta tags can accomplish.<\/p>\n There are many different types of meta tags, including title, description, keyword, image alt text, robots, language, and even schema markup.<\/p>\n This article focuses on the most common ones; specifically, descriptions and keywords.<\/p>\n When it comes to SEO, meta tags are highly important. Maybe not quite as important as content or links, but still, they are very important to the overall optimization process.<\/p>\n Better title tags may mean the difference between the success or failure of your page.<\/p>\n Having blank meta tags (such as a blank title or meta description) may mean that Google will choose what it thinks are the best ones for your page. Its algorithm is not perfect and could potentially create less than what you might want to see.<\/p>\n This is why it\u2019s important to ensure that you include at least a physical page title and description for your page. Otherwise, you leave it up to Google\u2019s algorithm to choose it.<\/p>\n The page title tag is the main descriptive element of your page.<\/p>\n Your title tag is the one thing that everyone sees when they come across your site in the Google search results.<\/p>\n This is why it is crucial to ensure it accurately reflects the page\u2019s content. If you\u2019re writing a blog post, you want to ensure that the page title accurately reflects the post\u2019s content.<\/p>\n You want people to know exactly where they are and what they\u2019re looking at.<\/p>\n While some sites still rank very well despite having poor title tags, others don\u2019t seem to care much about the title tag.<\/p>\n Why do some sites not spend as much effort on the title tag while others continue their usual optimizations? Well, it seems like it depends on the type of site. Some sites focus heavily on video, while others focus heavily on text. Some sites are focused on a specific topic, while others cover multiple topics.<\/p>\n There are many different reasons why a site might choose not to put any effort into its title tags. However, the truth is that having a quality title tag can be a great determining factor in how Google understands your page.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re building a brand new site, you probably won\u2019t need to worry too much about SEO efforts on your title tag. However, once your site starts getting traffic, you\u2019ll want to track things like bounce and conversion rates.<\/p>\n By tracking those metrics, you\u2019ll be able to determine whether the title tag is actually impacting your performance, and where to go from there in terms of how to better optimize it.<\/p>\n Google\u2019s Search Essentials documentation explains the following<\/a> about page title best practices and how to influence them in the search results correctly:<\/p>\n Aside from its Search Essentials<\/a>, there are several things that Google has mentioned about page titles that should be observed.<\/p>\n \u201cWe do use it for ranking, but it\u2019s not the most critical part of a page. So it\u2019s not worthwhile filling it with keywords to hope that it works that way. In general, we try to recognise when a title tag is stuffed with keywords because that\u2019s also a bad user experience for users in the search results. If they\u2019re looking to understand what these pages are about and they just see a jumble of keywords, then that doesn\u2019t really help.\u201d \u2013 John Mueller, Google 2016<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cI\u2019d just write natural titles, the way you\u2019d want them to appear in search, and how you\u2019d want to present them for users. Slash (separators) is fine & can perform well anywhere.\u201d \u2013 John Mueller, Google 2020<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cOf all the ways we generate titles, content from HTML title tags is still by far the most likely used, more than 80% of the time.\u201d\u2013 Google Search Central Blog, 2021<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cIf your document appears in a search results page, the contents of the title tag may appear in the first line of the results.\u201d \u2013Google, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cWe introduced a new system of generating titles for web pages. Before this, titles might change based on the query issued. This generally will no longer happen with our new system. This is because we think our new system is producing titles that work better for documents overall, to describe what they are about, regardless of the particular query.\u201d \u2013 Google Search Central Blog, 2021<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Another meta tag that\u2019s important to SEO is the meta description tag.<\/p>\n This is the very short snippet paragraph underneath the page title within the search results. As long as you utilize a more accurate description than what you can ascertain from the on-page content, Google will use it.<\/p>\n This meta tag is not much of something used for ranking. Instead, it\u2019s something that\u2019s used to entice and inform users about the page in general.<\/p>\n It creates a short and relevant summary of what that specific web page is actually about. In its simplest form, this is basically a sales pitch for your website. It\u2019s meant to convince the user that your page is exactly what they are looking for.<\/p>\n Google explains that there is no limit to the length of the meta description and that it truncates the snippet on the SERPs as needed \u2013 and this is usually done on a device-width basis.<\/p>\n Despite the apparent lack of control when it comes to rankings, writing meta descriptions is still an important part of any SEO professional\u2019s arsenal. This can mean the difference between significant CTR from the SERPs, as opposed to sub-standard CTRs.<\/p>\n This is why it makes sense to make both page titles and meta descriptions a focus of your own SEO efforts whenever you optimize a page.<\/p>\n Google\u2019s Search Essentials<\/a> explains what it looks for in meta descriptions.<\/p>\n Note that meta descriptions should be visible on the webpage. If they are not visible, Google will ignore them in 99% of cases.<\/p>\n Google explains that identical, and even similar, meta descriptions on multiple site pages are not helpful when these pages appear in the SERPs.<\/p>\n It recommends that SEO pros create meta descriptions that are unique and that accurately describe the specific page.<\/p>\n On the main home page (or aggregation pages), it also recommends that you utilize site-level descriptions and then use page-level descriptions on all other types of pages.<\/p>\n Google recommends including relevant information within the meta description that reflects the actual page.<\/p>\n For news and blog posts, it explains that these meta descriptions can list the author, the publication date, and byline information that would otherwise not be displayed.<\/p>\n In addition, product pages that have specific information scattered throughout the page that might be helpful for users could be included here, too.<\/p>\n Google adds that any great meta description can provide all the relevant information a user might need to decide to visit that particular page.<\/p>\n It\u2019s possible to generate your web page\u2019s meta descriptions programmatically. (Not only possible, but Google actively encourages doing so in its Search Essentials documentation.)<\/p>\n This is especially true for larger sites with thousands of pages.<\/p>\n Google doesn\u2019t expect the average user to be able to handwrite meta descriptions on larger sites. It still recommends ensuring that these meta descriptions are varied and human-readable.<\/p>\n For example, don\u2019t go in assuming you can programmatically create meta descriptions that are terrible quality and expect to have a good day from an SEO perspective.<\/p>\n It also recommends avoiding long strings of keywords in the meta descriptions \u2013 don\u2019t do that here, either!<\/p>\n Google\u2019s recommendations also highlight the quality of meta descriptions. It also wants to see significantly high quality here \u2013 and make sure that your meta descriptions really are descriptive.<\/p>\n The Google Search Essentials documentation is a good start, but they don\u2019t contain all the information that Google might consider.<\/p>\n The following is a collection of what Google has said elsewhere on the web about meta descriptions:<\/p>\n \u201cYou kind of have to balance your time and think is it really worthwhile to like go through a hundred thousand pages and write a new description or should I just like keep this in mind when I\u2019m making new pages and not worry so much about this limit of a hundred and sixty characters or whatever it used to be because I think especially when we make changes like this they they tend to go back and forth a little bit until we find the right balance.\u201d \u2013 John Mueller, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not the case that changing your descriptions or making them longer or shorter or tweaking them or putting keywords in there will affect your site\u2019s ranking.\u201d \u2013 John Mueller 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cBecause meta descriptions are usually visible only to search engines and other software, webmasters sometimes forget about them, leaving them completely empty. It\u2019s also common, for the same reason, that the same meta description is used across multiple (and sometimes many) pages. On the flip side, it\u2019s also relatively common that the description is completely off-topic, low quality, or outright spammy. These issues tarnish our users\u2019 search experience, so we prefer to ignore such meta descriptions.\u201d \u2013 Google 2017 \u201cKeep in mind that we adjust the description based on the user\u2019s query. So if you\u2019re doing a site query and seeing this in your search results for your site that\u2019s not necessarily what a normal user would see when they see a search as well.\u201d \u2013 John Mueller, Google 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The meta robots tag allows you to control indexing and crawling of your pages. In short, this allows you to take advantage of a more granular approach to controlling the indexation of individual pages.<\/p>\n It is important to note that this setting can be read and followed only when the page itself is crawlable and accessible to Google.<\/p>\n For example, don\u2019t think disallowing a page and noindexing it will benefit you.<\/p>\n Although there are situations where Google might ignore the robots.txt file, you want to ensure that, in most cases, you are allowing the crawling and indexing of the page so Google can physically observe that particular rule.<\/p>\n The code snippet above shows how to add the meta robots tag to your pages<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the overall page code structure, this should be added to the top of the page, within the code, between the beginning and ending head tags.<\/p>\n The meta viewport tag is an important part of meta tags that are added to the page and has to do with making sure that your site is a fully responsive website design.<\/p>\n In short, this meta tag provides specific instructions to the browser on how to render your page on a mobile device. This tag also shows Google that the page itself is mobile-friendly.<\/p>\n In general, the rule is to include the viewport meta tag on every page you want optimized for a mobile device. The parameters within this tag control the page\u2019s dimensions and scaling attributes.<\/p>\n First, mobile browsers will render a page at the width of a desktop screen (at its minimum, around 980px, but this can vary across devices).<\/p>\n Then, they will attempt to make the content appear better by adjusting it to fit the screen and increasing font sizes.<\/p>\n As a result, this might mean that font sizes could appear inconsistent to different users. To rectify this, one could potentially just use a system font instead.<\/p>\n The following screenshot shows how to include and configure the meta viewport tag<\/a> within your code:<\/p>\n The charset meta tag is a tag that allows you to define specific character encoding for your page. This tag is important because it helps provide the vehicle that the browser uses to output characters to text.<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t have the charset tag defined, a browser might output garbage text because of this lack of understanding of the input text. Without this tag, the browser must make an uninformed guess quickly.<\/p>\n While not extremely important in terms of SEO ranking factors, it is important if you want to make sure that your page is as cross-browser and cross-platform as possible.<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t add it, it\u2019s not the end of the world. The HTML5 specification does include UTF-8 character encoding by default.<\/p>\n But, if you want to use another type of character encoding for your page \u2013 for whatever reason \u2013 then, by all means, you may want to seriously consider adding this tag in those situations.<\/p>\n Did you know that specific meta tags can help you control the appearance of your search results?<\/p>\n One such meta tag is the no sitelinks search box meta tag<\/a>:<\/p>\n If, for some reason, you don\u2019t want a sitelinks search box to appear on the Google SERPs, then you can simply use this meta tag to remove it.<\/p>\nWhy Meta Tags Are Important For SEO<\/h2>\n
Page Title Tags<\/h2>\n
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What Else Has Google Said About Page Titles?<\/h2>\n
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Meta Description Tags<\/h2>\n
Best Practices For Writing Meta Descriptions<\/h2>\n
Make Sure That Every Meta Description On Your Site Is Unique<\/h2>\n
Ensure That Your Description Includes Relevant Information About The Content<\/h2>\n
Automatically Generating Meta Descriptions<\/h2>\n
Make Sure Your Meta Descriptions Are Of High Enough Quality<\/h2>\n
What Else Has Google Said About Meta Descriptions?<\/h2>\n
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How To Add A Meta Robots Tag To Your Page<\/h2>\n
<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html><head>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex\"><\/strong>\n(\u2026)<\/i>\n<\/head>\n<body>(\u2026)<\/i><\/body>\n<\/html><\/pre>\n
How To Add A Meta Viewport Tag To Your Page<\/h2>\n
Setting The Viewport<\/h2>\n
<!<\/span>DOCTYPE<\/span> html<\/span>><\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<<\/span>html lang<\/span>=<\/span>\"<\/span>en\"<\/span><\/span>><\/span><\/span><\/span>\n <<\/span>head><\/span><\/span><\/span>\n \u2026<\/span>\n<<\/span>meta name<\/span>=<\/span>\"<\/span>viewport\"<\/span><\/span> content<\/span>=<\/span>\"<\/span>width=device-width, initial-scale=1\"<\/span><\/span>><\/span><\/span><\/mark> \u2026<\/span>\n <\/<\/span>head><\/span><\/span><\/span>\n \u2026<\/span><\/pre>\nHow To Add The Meta Charset Tag To Your Web Page<\/h2>\n
No Sitelinks Search Box Meta Tag<\/h2>\n
<meta<\/span> name<\/span>=<\/span>\"google\"<\/span> content<\/span>=<\/span>\"nositelinkssearchbox\"<\/span>><\/span><\/pre>\n
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