What are Meta Tags? Guide using SEO Meta Tags on your Website

Robin Gandy, December 15, 2022

As a website owner, one of the most important things you can do to improve your website’s visibility and ranking within search engines is to use SEO meta tags. There are many ways to improve your site ranking, but starting with your SEO meta data is a crucial and easy first step.

What are SEO meta tags?

SEO meta tags are HTML tags that provide search engines with valuable information about the content of your website. They can be used to improve your search engine rankings, as well as help to make sure that your website is found by the right audience.

Meta data also lets a search engine know how to display a web page in search results:

Above is how Pagecloud.com displays in Google, which includes the a Title tag and Description tag.

All SEO meta tags you can add to your page

There are a number of meta tags you can add to your page which include:

Title Tag: A tag used to specify the title of a web page. This is important for SEO as it helps search engines to understand what the page is about.

Description Tag: A tag used to provide a short summary of a web page. This is important for SEO as it helps search engines to determine if the page is relevant to a user's search query.

Keywords Tag: A tag used to list words or phrases that are associated with a web page. This is important for SEO as it helps search engines to understand the content of a page and match it to user searches.

Robots Tag: A tag used to provide instructions to search engine bots on how to crawl and index a web page.

Canonical Tag: A tag used to identify the original source of content and prevent duplicate content from appearing in search engine results.

Open Graph Tag: A tag used to provide descriptions and images that are used when a page is shared on social media platforms.

Learn more about Open Graph Tags

Href lang Tag: A tag used to identify pages that are available in multiple languages. This helps search engines to serve the appropriate version of a page to users based on their language settings.

What are the most important SEO meta tags?

Take a look at a few of the most important tags to include on each page of your website.

Title Tags

The most important SEO meta tag to include on your website is the title tag. This is the first thing a user will see when they search for your website. Make sure that your title tag accurately reflects the content of your website, and that it is descriptive and keyword-rich.

Meta Descriptions

In addition to the title tag, you should also include meta descriptions for each page of your website. Meta descriptions provide search engines with a brief summary of the page’s content. They should be unique and interesting, and should also include relevant keywords.

Keyword Tags

You should also include keywords on each page of your website. Meta keywords are a list of words that are related to the content on your page. Search engines use these keywords to determine if your page is relevant to a particular search query.

Check out this blog post to learn more about finding the right keywords for your site

Keyword tags play a huge role in driving traffic to your website through organic search.

Canonical Tags

Finally, you should also include canonical tags on each page of your website. Canonical tags are used to tell search engines which version of a page should be indexed. This is particularly important if you have multiple versions of a page, such as a mobile version or a printer-friendly version.

How to add meta tags to your website

To add meta tags to your website, you can add the code directly to the HTML of the page by including the <meta> tag and the content attribute within the <head> section of your page. If you are using a website builder, like Pagecloud, there is likely somewhere you can add them that doesn't require you to add them directly to the <head>.

Here for example you can see Title, Language, Description, and Keyword tags available in the Pagecloud UI without having to open the <head>.

What next?

By using SEO meta tags, you can ensure that your website is properly indexed by search engines and that it is found by the right people. Take the time to ensure that all of your meta tags are accurate, descriptive, and keyword-rich, and you will be well on your way to achieving higher search engine rankings.

Learn more about SEO with out ultimate beginner's guide