Complete Guide to SEO Meta Tags
Meta data is used by search engines to determine what a webpage is about and how to list it in search results. Meta data is not visible to your site visitors, but it is essential for SEO purposes.
Title and Description
The Title Tag
The title tag should:
- Recommended length is 50-60 characters. Exceeding 60 characters may result in the title being truncated in search results.
- Accurately describe the content of the page.
- Contain relevant descriptive keywords.
- Be unique for each page on the website, avoiding duplicate titles.
- Include the brand name, preferably at the end of the title.
Example: "Complete Guide to SEO Meta Tags | Sarra Systems"
The Meta Description Tag
Your description needs to be compelling, truthful, unique, and contain the key phrases that people would use to find this page. You need to do this in 160 characters or less.
- Meta descriptions can be any length, but search engines generally truncate snippets longer than 160 characters. The recommended length is between 50 and 160 characters.
- Accurately describe the content of the page.
- Contain relevant descriptive keywords.
- Be unique for each page on the website, avoiding duplicate descriptions.
- Include a call to action when possible to increase the click-through rate (CTR).
Example: "Learn how to optimise your SEO meta tags to improve search engine rankings and increase traffic. Read more!"
Other Important SEO Meta Tags
Meta Robots Tag
The meta robots tag tells search engines how to treat your page. Common values are:
index, follow: Index the page and follow the links.noindex, nofollow: Do not index the page and do not follow the links.noarchive: Prevents Google from saving a cached copy of the page.nosnippet: Prevents Google from showing a preview of the page content in search results.
Example: <meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
Meta Keywords Tag
Although the importance of meta keywords has diminished, they can still be used to specify relevant keywords for the page content. However, do not rely solely on this meta tag to improve your SEO.
Example: <meta name="keywords" content="SEO, meta tags, optimisation, search engines">
Implementing SEO Meta Tags
Make sure to place these meta tags within the <head> section of your HTML code. Here’s an example of how it might look:
<head>
<title>Complete Guide to SEO Meta Tags | Sarra Systems</title>
<meta name="description" content="Learn how to optimise your SEO meta tags to improve search engine rankings and increase traffic. Read more!">
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
<meta name="keywords" content="SEO, meta tags, optimisation, search engines">
</head>
For more details on how to write effective page titles and improve CTR, visit our article: Complete Guide to Writing Effective Page Titles.