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Meta Tag Optimization

Meta tags are HTML elements that provide information to search engines about web pages. The four main meta tags are the title, description, keywords, and robots tags. The title tag appears at the top of browsers and impacts search rankings. Descriptions influence whether users click search results but don't affect rankings. Keywords were once important but Google no longer uses them. Robots tags tell search engines which pages to index and follow links on.

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76 views4 pages

Meta Tag Optimization

Meta tags are HTML elements that provide information to search engines about web pages. The four main meta tags are the title, description, keywords, and robots tags. The title tag appears at the top of browsers and impacts search rankings. Descriptions influence whether users click search results but don't affect rankings. Keywords were once important but Google no longer uses them. Robots tags tell search engines which pages to index and follow links on.

Uploaded by

zameer
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Meta Tag Optimization

Meta tags are HTML elements that will tell search engines what a web page is about, there are four
elements that must be placed as tags in the <head> section of a HTML document, These elements are

 Meta Title
 Meta Description
 Meta Keywords
 Meta robots

If you want to find out whether a given page is using Meta tags, just right-click anywhere on the page
and select View Page Source. Increase your traffic by letting Google knows who you are and what you
provide by using Meta tags.

Meta Title:
This is the text you'll see at the top of your browser. Search engines view this text as the title of your
page. Title tags, on the other hand, are the most important of all of the Meta tags discussed here. These
tags have a real impact on search rankings.

 Title tags should be 60-70 characters long, including spaces.


 You’re most important keywords need to be first in your title tag, with your least important
words coming last.
 If your company name is not part of the important keyword phrases, put it at the end of the title
tag.
 Do not duplicate title tags, they must be written differently for every page.
 Do not ‘keyword stuff’ title tags, Keyword stuffing is the worst offense when it comes to title
tags and you will be penalized for it.
 Make your headline (<h1> tag) different from the title tag, this is another opportunity to vary
the keyword phrasing of your page and increase its chances of appearing for different search
intent.
Where do I add the title tag?

You can add a title tag in the <head> section in your site’s HTML. It should look something like this:

<head>

<title>Example Title</title>

</head>

However in most content management systems (CMS), including WordPress, you can either add a title
tag in general settings: Or if you use an SEO plug-in, such as Yoast SEO, you can add a title tag to the
‘SEO title’ section, and you can preview an example of how it will look in search engine results pages
(SERPs):

Can Google override your title tag?

Occasionally yes. Sometimes if Google doesn’t like your title tag it will rewrite it for its search engine
results, pulling in information from your Meta description and page content. Chances are this won’t be
as good as the one you’ve created, so you must ensure that your own title tag is completely relevant,
descriptive, keyword rich but readable and the right length.

Meta Description:

This is the brief description of the page, it explains to search engines and searchers themselves what
your page is about.

A Meta description can influence the decision of the searcher as to whether they want to click through
on your content from search results or not. The more descriptive, attractive and relevant the
description, the more likely someone will click through.

It’s important to note that the description tag won’t always show up in the results for a Google search
(Google frequently picks a snippet of text from the page itself). Descriptive tags may encourage users to
visit your site.

 Meta descriptions can be any length, but search engines generally truncate snippets longer than
160 characters. It is best to keep Meta descriptions between 320 characters. Important to note
that Meta descriptions do not to influence Google's ranking algorithms for normal web search.
 Meta description tags, while not important to search engine rankings, are extremely important
in gaining user click-through from SERPs.
 Do make sure you’re most important keywords for the webpage show up in the Meta
description.
 Often search engines will highlight in bold where it finds the searchers query in your snippet.
 Do not duplicate Meta descriptions: As with title tags, the Meta descriptions must be written
differently for every page. Google may penalize you for mass duplicating your Meta
descriptions.

Where do I add the Meta description?

You can add a Meta description in the <head> section of your site’s HTML. It should look something like
this:

<head>

<meta name=”description” content=”Here is a precise description of my awesome webpage.”>

</head>

You should have complete control of your Meta description in your CMS, particularly if you’re using
WordPress.

If you use an SEO plug-in, such as Yoast SEO, you can add a Meta description to the ‘meta description’
section,

And you can preview an example of how it will look in search engine results pages (SERPs):

Meta Keywords

Years ago, the Meta keyword tags may have been beneficial, but not anymore. These days Google
doesn’t use Meta keywords in its ranking algorithm at all. But other search engines like Bing and yahoo
still gives us ranking.

Meta Robots:
An indication to search engine crawlers (robots or "bots") as to what they should do with the page.
With this attribute, you're telling the search engines what to do with your pages
index/noindex - This tells the engines whether to show your page in search results or not.
follow/nofollow - This tells the engines what to do with links on your pages: whether they should trust
and "follow" your links to the next page or not.

Meta robots tag is a tag that tells search engines what to follow and what not to follow.
It is a piece of code in the <head> section of your webpage.

It is a piece of code in the <head> section of your webpage. It’s a simple code that gives you the power
to decide about what pages you want to hide from search engine crawlers and what pages you want
them to index and look at.

Basically the meta robots tag can be cracked down to four main functions for the
search engine crawlers:
 FOLLOW – a command for the search engine crawler to follow the links in that webpage

 INDEX – a command for the search engine crawler to index that webpage

 NOFOLLOW – a command for the search engine crawler NOT to follow the links in that webpage

 NOINDEX – a command for the search engine crawler NOT to index that webpage

<meta name =”robots” content=”index”>

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow”>

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