Meta tags – what are they and how do they affect your search engine rank?

What are meta tags?

Most meta tags are hidden from the readers when they visit your site. However, they indirectly affect whether they will even find it in the first place. How is this possible?

Meta tags play a significant role in the SEO process – they allow your site to gain a higher position in search results, and thus be more visible to the user.

How do meta tags affect SEO ranking?

The Google search engine carefully analyzes the content of web pages. This is done to best adapt the displayed results to the queries entered by users.

The more information you have about a site, the more trusted it is in robots’ assessments. This makes Google more likely to display it to users who may be interested in this topic.

Which meta tags are important to search engines?

There are many meta tags, but not all of them are very important. Using some of them can even have a negative impact on the ranking of the page. Therefore, before you decide to introduce them into the code, make sure that it will bring you benefits. Important meta tags that are worth completing are primarily:

• meta title,
• meta description,
• meta robots.

What are the individual tags for? I’ll explain!

Meta title

The meta title tag is particularly important because it will be seen by both robots and users. This is the title of a given page, which is the first thing that catches the eye in search results. This is valuable information about what is in the text on a given page.

How to write a good meta title?

• Attract attention – titles in the form of questions and those with numbers work best, for example: ‘How to prepare groundnut soup? 7 simple recipes’.
• Show what the text is about – although the description should be creative and eye-catching, its basic function is to inform about the content of the page. That’s why sometimes it’s worth betting on simplicity!
• Include the main keyword – meta tags affect both the user experience and the robots’ rating. For the latter, it is worth including a keyword phrase in the title.
• Remember the right length – the meta title tag should take up no more than 600 pixels on the screen, which is about 60 characters.

Meta description

The content of the meta description, similarly to the meta title, is also visible to your potential customer. It is a short description located under the title in the search results. Completing it allows you to provide the user with slightly more detailed information about your website or offer. However, it is worth knowing that this text does not affect the robots’ rating and ranking. However, it is an opportunity to convince the prospect to click and then read the content.

If you do not fill in this meta tag, a fragment of text from the page containing the phrase entered by the prospect will be displayed here.

How to write an effective meta description?

• Summarize the content of the page as best as you can and encourage people to read the rest of the information.
• Use a call to action (CTA). For example: “See!”, “Order!”, “Check!”.
• Communicate in accordance with your brand’s style and image (e.g. professional, humorous, objective, emotional).
• Don’t exceed 160 characters!

Meta robots

This tag is aimed exclusively at robots and does not contain information useful to the user. The task of meta robots is to determine whether a given subpage should be indexed in the search engine. What does it mean?

If you run the website www.contentwriter.ng, its position is influenced by the quality of all subpages, so for example:

• contentwriter.ng/blog,
• contentwriter.ng/about,
• contentwriter.ng/services,
• contentwriter.ng/contact,
• contentwriter.ng/newsletter,

If for some reason you consider that any of them would adversely affect your position in the search engine, you will use the meta robots tag to inform the robots not to include it in the evaluation of your website. This way, the given subpage will not appear in the search results and will not spoil the website’s ranking.

When to decide not to index a page?

• When there is duplicate text on subpages – duplicate content negatively affects ranking and can cause penalties.
• When you want the user to go to a given page only in specific situations, e.g. after adding something to the basket or signing up for a newsletter.
• When visits to a given subpage do not bring you any benefits – e.g. in the case of a privacy policy or regulations.

Alt tag

The alt tag is not a meta tag, but it is worth mentioning because it can be very important for positioning. It is good to use it if photos or graphics appear on a given subpage. This is a so-called alternative description, the task of which is to inform what is in a given image. What is the purpose of this?

• If your page is viewed by blind or visually impaired people who use text readers, using this meta tag allows them to receive all the content available on the page.
• If a potential customer is viewing your site on a device or browser that can’t display images, they’ll know what’s in a given graphic.
• As you might imagine, Google’s bots can’t interpret the content of a photo that well. By using an alt tag, you make it easier for the robots to understand what a particular image is about. If it’s consistent with the theme of the page, that works in your favor!

This tag, unlike the others, is not in the header of the page, but in the body part – where you want to place the graphic.

How to create effective alt descriptions?

• Be concise – describe only what is most important in the image.
• Use keywords – let the alt tag not only inform, but also position.
• Use full sentences – instead of listing: “desk work, woman, coffee”, describe the situation: “A woman works at a desk, drinking coffee”.