How do meta tags affect SEO?
Meta tags are the primary way in which businesses can affect how their website appears in search results. This makes them incredibly important for SEO; optimising title and meta description tags is one of the most impactful changes you can make to a site.
What is the difference between the title tag and the H1 heading tag?
The title tag for a page and the page’s heading (usually displayed in an H1 tag) have the same basic goal: to describe the page’s topic. Despite this, they differ by their intended audience. The heading tag is for users and is displayed on the page itself. The title tag is for use by search engines, and is displayed on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Is the title tag important for SEO?
Yes. The title tag of a web page determines how it will appear to users within search results. It is very important to SEO and has a large impact on page ranking. We recommend using an SEO specialist to optimize the title tags for important pages on your site.
Is the meta description tag important for SEO?
Yes. The meta description tag determines how your page is summarized to users in search results. It has a large impact on how likely users are to click on your page (click through rate) and is thus incredibly important to SEO. We recommend using an experienced SEO technician to optimize the meta descriptions for important pages on your site.
Is the meta author tag important for SEO?
The meta author tag shows search engines who has written a web page. It can be incredibly impactful, as Google is likely to give large ranking boosts to pages that are written by an expert. Additionally, for some areas (usually medical and financial related) it can be very hard to rank at all unless your content has been written by an established expert. This is so that Google can protect users from poor medical and financial advice.
Is the meta keyword tag important for SEO?
No. Meta keywords used to be a way for sites to disclose their subject matter to search engines but were very prone to “keyword stuffing” where businesses would include as many keywords as possible in an effort to rank higher. As a result, Google has not used meta keywords as a ranking factor for over a decade and does not recommend adding them to sites.
What is the meta robots tag and how does it affect search engine crawlers?
The meta robots tag contains instructions for search engine crawlers dictating how they can behave on the site. They can be used to prevent a crawler from indexing the page which will stop if appearing in search results. This can be useful for login pages and other content you do not wish to appear in search results. It can also have a large negative impact if used incorrectly on important landing pages.
How long should the content of a meta tag be?
Google changes their guidelines for meta content over time, and likes to experiment with how they display information in search results pages. In general however, your page title should be 60 characters or less and your meta description should be 160 characters or less. This ensures that they are displayed correctly in the search results.
How do I optimize my meta tags for better SEO results?
In order to achieve better SEO results, you should ensure that all pages have a unique title tag which accurately describes the page’s content in 60 characters or less. It is also recommended that you include the site or brand name somewhere in the title (usually at the end unless you have extremely high brand recognition). You should also write a unique meta description for each page that includes a short (<160 words) summary of the content. Descriptions are not as important to ranking as titles, but drive users to click on pages and should be taken seriously as well. Finally, if your page is written by someone important, knowledgeable or influential within the area, make sure to include a meta author tag as well.
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