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Understanding Meta tags: Definition, meta tag analysis of a webpage of choice and description of each meta tag



I. Definition

Meta tags define information about data on a HTML document. Meta tags vary in terms of types: title tags, meta description, view-port tag, robots, canonical tags and content type tags however, the most relevant meta tags are meta description tags, meta keyword tags and social media meta tags. Meta tags are always used inside the <head> element of an HTML page (W3Schools, 2022).

II. How does it work

The title tag and the meta description length boost the relevance of a site into SERP. These tags together with the meta keyword tag provide brief information about a website helping users to decide if the website in case is in their interest or no. The view port tag assist users who access website from a mobile device with a positive experience. Robots tag are used to filter content from index search or filter websites based on the language that they had been created (Brightedge, 2022).





III. Types of Meta tags

To continue we will analyse most commonly used meta tags and best use practice of these meta tags:Title tag
Meta description
Canonical Tag
Robots meta tag
Social Media Meta Tags (Open Graph and Twitter Cards)


 

Title Tag: specifies a web page to a search engine and it is supported by majority of popular search engines. A preferable length of this tag is under 60 characters and it should include long tail keywords and it must be unique for each web page (Fontane,2021).

Description Tag: this tag provides a summary of a web page for the search engines. It is usually displayed under the tittle tag in the search index. A good meta description tag should contain relevant information of the web page, it should not be duplicated, include key words and encourage users to access the web site (TutotialsPoint, 2022).

Canonical tag: when implemented into the code the canonical tag inform search engines which web page it is the relevant one. It is mostly used on single page URL which has the same content with other multiple page URLs.
Canonical tags as specified above are letting web spiders or crawlers know which action they should take regarding a page: index or no index. They main purpose is to filter pages for content or languages depending on geographical location (W3schools, 2022).

Social media tags: These tags can be of two types: the open graph tag which is used to facilitate communication between a site and Facebook, LinkedIn, Google and Twitter cards which assists in improving communication between web pages and Twitter. Both tags work in a similar way with the only difference being that Twitter cards it is used for Twitter whilst open reach tag for other social media platforms (Sharma, 2022).


IV. Web page meta tags examples






References

BrightEdge, 2022. Are HTML Meta Tags Important?. [online] BrightEdge. Available at: <https://www.brightedge.com/glossary/are-meta-tags-important> [Accessed 27 July 2022].

Fontané, 2021. Full List of Meta Tags, Why They Matter for SEO & How to Write Them. [online] Blog.hubspot.com. Available at: <https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/meta-tags> [Accessed 27 July 2022].

Sharma, 2022. Meta Tags in 2022: Why are They Important in SEO?. [online] Advanced Web Ranking Blog. Available at: <https://www.advancedwebranking.com/blog/meta-tags-important-in-seo/> [Accessed 27 July 2022].

Tutorialspoint, 2022. HTML - Meta Tags. [online] Tutorialspoint.com. Available at: <https://www.tutorialspoint.com/html/html_meta_tags.htm> [Accessed 27 July 2022].

W3schools, 2022. HTML meta tag. [online] W3schools.com. Available at: <https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_meta.asp> [Accessed 27 July 2022].



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