Meta tags are one of the most talked-about subjects in the world of SEO. The SEO Meta tags offers an augmented detail on your web page and assist the search engine to understand what your content is all about. However, this hugely influential and intuitive meta tags are often misunderstood because of their misuse. In the earlier days of SEO, people tended to manipulate the search algorithm by stuffing keywords inside the meta tags and that’s the very reason why Google changed its algorithm on how they consider and value the meta tags.

 

Here, in this guide, we’ll be providing you some vital details about meta tags, cited by Intlum and some other global SEO agencies, in order to show you how the meta tags can be a secret metric to rank you higher on any search engine by pushing your page forward. Moreover, we’ll also talk about how meta tags have been evolved, the vital meta tags for your SEO along with the ones that should be ignored. So, let’s get into the article.

 

What is Meta Tag?

Let’s not make it complicated for you, Meta Tags are the small HTML codes which let the search engine know about the content and subject-matter of every web page that you have. The term, ‘Meta’ is a shortened version of Metadata which is a supplemental data about your web page like content type, page title and description. Search Engines make use of the meta tag data on their SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) to show to the users who are searching for something.

 

Are Meta Tags Required for SEO?

No matter what happens, Meta Tags are (and will be) immensely crucial for SEO. They have been a staple of a profound SEO strategy by the experts since the initial days of SEO. Despite their modified and altered value and usage, you cannot ignore them if you’re eyeing on an effective result.

 

Most Important Meta Tags for SEO

If you want good ranking, it’s also important to use the right tag for the right purpose. The meta tags can have an enormous effect on the search engine rankings as well as improve the search users’ experience when used in the right way. Arguably, the two most important meta tags are:

1. Meta Title

2. Meta Description.

 

Best Meta Tags for SEO

Below are the best meta tags you can use for your website optimization for the search engines. These tags will help you improve your search ranking drastically without facing any sort of issues. So, let’s take a look at the best meta tags.

 

Title Tags

Title tag may not be called a meta tag, technically, but it’s often gets included while tagging a web page. Basically, the title tags are the HTML tag which is also known as SEO title that are the concise descriptions of your web page. The title tags are vital for your social sharing, usability and SEO and they are used by the search engines to create a clickable hyperlink on the SERP in order to leverage the searchers to click it and visit the page. You SEO title should be 600px long (60-65 characters with space) and should be unique as well as present on all the web pages on your site.

 

Meta Description Tag

Meta descriptions do not directly have an impact on your SEO marketing since Google announced in 2009 that it would not have any effect on the search ranking. Since the very moment, the purpose of Meta Description tags has evolved! Nowadays, marketers make use of the meta description as a factor to improve the CTR (Click Through Rate) on your web pages. The meta descriptions are the little piece of texts that is placed right under the meta title on the SERP, which means when you create a catchy meta description, it’ll promptly grab the users’ attention and they’re going to click on your web page. The online search behavior is to skim through the SERP which is the very reason why Meta Description tag is hugely important to be catchy and stimulating.

 

Viewport Tags

Viewport tags have become one of the prime inclusions for all the modern websites out there who would like to rank online. In order to promote a mobile-friendly experience in the mobile-evolved world, it is of the utmost importance that you specify a viewport tag. If you don’t have this tag integrated into your website, your web pages will be displayed for the desktop-sized widths and the users will have to pinch and zoom to see the web page’s content which is undoubtedly, a blunder for your user experience.

 

Canonical Tags

Despite technically not being a meta tag, Canonical tags have emerged as one of the most important tags for the SEO viewpoint. Initially introduced in the year of 2009, it is one of the great advancements in the history of search engine optimization. This tag is used for specifying one URL to the search engine that it’s the preferred URL over the other. In the world of marketing, it’s also known as Canonical URL or Rel Canonical.

 

Suppose, your website has two URLs for one single page like https://sample.com/blog/seo/ and https://sample.com/marketing/seo/. So, Google may get confused regarding which one to rank and it’s very possible that Google ranks them both! It will confuse your users. But when you make use of a canonical tag, you tell Google to prefer one URL over the other.

 

Social Meta Tags

When you add the social meta tags on your website for the leading social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest to name a few, it helps you optimize the social sharing streams for your content. By using these tags, you can stipulate how your titles, descriptions, and images are going to be shown on the social media platforms. This optimization would greatly help you get easy shares, reshares, and mentions. So, your branding gets higher!

 

Summing Up

We have described everything about meta tags in brief. If you optimize your meta tags well, there is a superlative chance to get ranking on the higher part of Google and other search engines. If you want to rank higher and secure your spot at the top, you should pay attention to every little thing and meta tags is one of such delicate aspects that can never be neglected.