Meta tags are coding statements that provide information about the content of a page. They are usually a snippet of text, usually less than 60 characters, which inform the search engines about the content of your page. It is the information that spiders look for so as to know what your resource on the web is all about.
Although meta tags are not displayed as part of a page content, they are a very important part of the page. To achieve meaningful, organic SEO ranking, one needs a careful selection and use of meta tags. First, they should be an accurate summary of the page, and second, should include the keywords for your page.
How to optimise meta tags
There are two main types; title tag, and the meta description.
- Title tag
This is located within the <head> section of your HTML code. It provides a concise summary of the page, and it is the one that appears on search results that are produced by a search engine.
The rule of thumb is to keep the title tag between 10 and 60 characters. Decide on the keywords you want to use. To ensure higher visibility, let the keywords appear in the phrase as early as possible. If the tag is too long, search engines will often truncate it and ignore some part of it, so keep it short.
- Meta description tag
The description tag is also very important part of your site. When a prospect visitor finds your site through a search engine, this is the description which they get. Therefore, this description should also give a brief summary of what your website is all about, in less than 200 characters.
To achieve optimum results, ensure that the tags are concise and brief, utilising your keywords appropriately.
