What Are Google Meta Tags & How They Impact SEO
Google meta tags are text snippets that explain the content of a web page. This information is not found on the page itself, but rather in the source code. In a nutshell, meta tags are a set of content descriptors that tell search engines what a page is all about.
The primary difference between tags you can see on an article and tags you can’t see: meta tags also commonly called ‘google meta tags’ are only visible to search engines because they only appear in HTML. The term “meta” refers to “metadata,” which is the type of information shared by these tags – information about the content of your website.
What Are Meta Tags For
Meta tags or Google Meta Tags are important because they affect how your website appears on search engine results pages (SERPs) and how many people will click through to your website. As a result, they will affect your traffic and engagement rates, which in turn will affect your SEO and rankings.
A good SEO strategy depends on meta tags. While some tags don’t directly affect rankings, they do affect how your site appears in the digital environment. They can also play some role in non-traditional search results like Knowledge Graph, Google image search, voice, and others. When creating content, no brand should ignore them.
Six Google Meta Tags To Boost Your Site’s SEO
Here are six essential meta tags that help you in ranking your webpage on SERP
Title Tag
User attention is drawn to the title tag in SERPs first. What you write about in your title will give people an idea of what your content is about. Besides appearing in search results, it can also be retrieved and used as an anchor text and a title in social shares. It’s an important element in the google meta tag.
There should be no more than 55 characters in the title tag.
In these 55 characters, you can include a keyword to improve SEO, but focusing on value is more important. A title with the proper keyword but isn’t an obvious search word won’t necessarily work.
Besides being important to visitors, the title tag is also important to search engines to find your content. You must combine clarity with the context in your title so that it is as clear as possible.
Meta Description
Title tags and meta descriptions are equally important. Meta descriptions are essential to google meta tags. Descriptions appear beneath the title tags on search engine results pages. Make sure that the meta description accurately describes what your page is about. Users click on your page based on this factor, so you should spend time optimizing it. 150-165 characters are the recommended length for meta descriptions.
Robots Meta Tag
The robot’s meta tag provides search engines with information on which pages on your site they should crawl. This meta-tag restricts specific pages from being searched by search engines.
If you don’t use the robot’s meta tag, crawlers will index and follow your website by default. But it’s best practice to include robot meta tags under the overall google meta tags umbrella.
Why would you need to use this meta tag in the first place? You may have certain pages on your site that are required but have very little substance. You don’t want them to be indexed in search, but they’re still crucial to the site, so you can use the no-index tag to keep them out of the SERPs.
The robot’s meta tag can be used to simply no-follow all links on a specific page.
Alt Text
Image optimization has become a critical component of modern SEO because it provides a new way to rank in search results, this time using your visual content. Google meta tags consider alt text as an identity for google search images.
Both search engines and users should be able to view your images. Alt text can do both of these things: it can provide a text alternative to images that will be displayed if the image doesn’t load or read aloud by a screen reader, and it can also notify search engines what the image represents.
Canonical Tag
If you have roughly identical pages on your site, you may need to tell search engines which one to prioritize. It’s also possible that you have published content on your site that has been reposted elsewhere. If you employ a canonical tag, you can accomplish both of these things without risking a duplicate content penalty.
You are guiding the crawlers as to which URL counts as the “primary” one, rather than confusing Google and losing your rating in the SERPs. This emphasizes the correct URL and prevents the others from detracting from your SEO.
Header Tag
Header tags are a part of your content; they’re the headings you utilize to organize your page. Header tags can help search engines comprehend what your content is about, in addition to boosting user experience and ease of reading. You shouldn’t overuse header tags, as vital as they are — think quality, not numbers. It’s not going to improve your SEO if you have five distinct sorts of headings on your page. Instead, strategically employ them to break up your content and introduce the primary point of your presentation.
Why Are Google Meta Tags Important
Google Meta tags, provide more information about your site to search engines and website users who come across it in the SERP. They can be tweaked to highlight the most crucial aspects of your content and help your site stand out in search results.
Search engines are constantly prioritizing a positive user experience, which includes ensuring that your site responds to a user’s query as effectively as possible. Google Meta tags assist with this by ensuring that the information searchers require about your site is concise and provides aid upfront.
Some meta tags deal with page structure and make your site easy to navigate, while others inform search engines which portions of your page are vital and which should be ignored.