Meta tags do not appear on your web pages; however, they can offer significant benefits to your visitor numbers if they are utilized correctly. It is important to understand their purpose and use, so read on to discover more about meta tags and how they could help your website to rise to the top of the search engine results pages.
What is a Meta Tag?
A meta tag is a description of a webpage that is included within the page’s HTML coding but does not display on a website page once it is loaded in a browser. The meta tag should not be confused with a page’s title tag, which is a necessary page element as defined by the W3C. Meta tags are completely optional, but it is important to include them if you want to achieve optimal results through the search engines.
The Description Meta Tag
According to Forbes, 99 per cent of webpages that feature in the top 10 search engine results feature a meta description. Although meta tags do not directly influence the SEO results, the inclusion of a page description can heavily influence visitors to click on your website if what they read seems relevant to their search; therefore, it pays to spend time crafting the perfect page descriptions. Although search engines claim not to rate sites according to description meta tags, insiders believe this is not necessarily the case.
The Keyword Meta Tag
Formerly an important part of any site’s SEO, the keyword as a meta tag is falling out of favour, although keywords themselves remain as important as ever for SEO purposes. If you are uncertain of how best to use keywords, it is a good idea to call in the experts to help and advise you. You can source a great web development company in London, or anywhere in the UK, with companies such as red snapper offering years of experience in digital technology and marketing.
The Robot Meta Tag
This is another one for the web design experts, as the robot meta tag can prevent search engine bots indexing some or all pages on your website. You can also stop web crawlers storing some pages within their cache. This is a particularly useful feature for the website development stage, when a website is still under construction.