Balises meta

Definition

A meta tag is an element in the HTML source of a page, used to transmit information, metadata, to search engines, to browsers, to social networks and to tools in general.

These tags are put in the <head> part of the source code. Users will not be able to see these.

More specifically, meta tags make it possible to give precise indications on the nature of the site, its title, its language, its description, and thus provide a crucial indication to search engines on how the site should be interpreted.

Meta tag thus is an invisible but essential tool for the referencing of a site.

Quick access

There are several meta tags, each with a specific function.

Here are the most important ones, especially for SEO:

The meta title tag

The user sees this as the “title” of the page in their Google Search result and appears in blue. A meta title tag helps search engines properly understand your page. But a good title must entice users to click through to your site, as it is the first thing they see.

How to optimize your SEO using meta titles?

Why would you want to include a meta title tag on your web page? The answer is that Google pays attention to your meta title tags when indexing your web page.

Here are some SEO best practices for writing your meta title tag:

Number of characters: It’s advisable to use a title tag under 60 characters. Otherwise, it will be cut off in a search result and the title will not make sense.
Keyword selection: It’s important to use your primary keyword in your title tag. Make sure you try to position your focus keywords right at the beginning of your title as it indicates Google and users.
Stop words: Get rid of stopwords, i.e. words that have no real meaning like ‘the’, ‘the’, etc. so as to effectively fill title tags with keywords but keeping it fluid.
Use separators: Using special characters, such as “-” or “|” can break up your sites title and help Google understanding your content.
Secondary keywords: Use secondary keywords in the rest of the title that will further direct Google and user to your content once you put your primary keyword at the beginning of the title tag.

Boost your click-through rate with the meta title tag

It’s smart to use numbers. According to a study by MOZ, it seems that titles that have numbers get clicked 36% more. Hubspot and Outbrain research shows that headlines with parentheses are 33% more likely to get read than those without.

Add parentheses and get a higher click-through rate. Lastly, be sure to highlight the value proposition clearly, proving to the user that your site contains a solution to his query and thereby enhancing engagement.

The meta description tag

The description shows below the title tag in Google search results. A meta-description is a summary of a webpage’s content that uses 140 to 160 characters long. It is also important to work well on it.

The syntax of this tag is as follows

<meta name="description" content="Short and punchy summary of the page, optimized for SEO." />

How to write a good meta description?

Meta description tags should follow these tips. To begin with, give the readers an eye-catching summary of your content to prompt a click. Subsequently, add in indicative keywords just like in the meta title tag to alert Google and users about what your page is about.

Limit your characters mindfully to under 160 characters so that it shows up on the search results easily. Last but not least, do not overhype your page content. The more promo it is users may not stick around when they click through.

The meta robots tag

This tag is used to give instructions to indexing robots . For example, it gives them the ability to tell them which pages bad crawlers may crawl or to control their crawl budget by blocking link tracking.

Here is the syntax of this meta tag

<meta name="robots" content="noindex">

Using meta robots tags in SEO

Meta robots tags are essential in SEO because they allow, among other things:

To prevent the indexing of an irrelevant page.
To prevent the transmission of link juice (nofollow) in order to maintain SEO authority
To control crawling on certain sensitive pages

The viewport meta tag

The mobile tag indicates to the browser how the mobile displays your web page, and so it is essential for your site to be responsive in Google’s eyes.

Not having a responsive website will be a negative signal to search engines, which can hurt its SEO ranking.

The syntax of this tag is as follows:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">

GEO tags

These tags are used to geolocate a web page or site . GEO tags help search engines find a web page and influence its placement on the local SERPs.

These tags can therefore be widely used during local SEO .

<meta name="geo.region" content="[CODE_COUNTRY-REGION]"> 
<meta name="geo.placename" content="[NAME_TOWN]"> 
<meta name="geo.position" content="[LATITUDE];[LONGITUDE]">

Meta tags for social networks

The Open Graph and Twitter Graph tags are used to control the preview of link to a web page on social networks. More specifically, they control how the image, title, description, and URL shows when sharing the link to a site on a social network.

These tags help improve the visibility of a web page and the interaction with users on social networks, as they control what will be the first image that the user will have without even clicking on the link.

Meta charset tags

These meta tags inform browsers about a web page’s character encoding. The charset meta tag tells browsers how to render characters like accents and symbols. People most often recommend and use the UTF-8 encoding since it supports various characters.

This HTML tag isn’t effective for SEO, but is needed for proper display of a webpage.

The meta keywords tag

Meta keywords let you allow the entry of words associated with the topic of your website and tell the search engines to index it. Since 2009, Google has excluded them from its algorithm but Baidu and Yandex certainly consider them.

Its syntax is as follows :

<meta name="keywords" content="keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3">

Other meta tags

There are some other meta tags that aren’t very helpful for SEO. However, they can be handy. For example, in the meta language tag, you indicate to search engines the language you’re writing in, while in the meta generator tag, you name the software used to create the website.

The meta author tag indicates who is the author of the page, and the google-site-verification tag configures your site on Google Search Console. Also, there are some meta tags designed particularly for a tool, company or platform like Apple, Microsoft, Google etc. And of course, there are many more beyond these examples.

Most popular definitions

seo
seo amazon
seo camp
seo e-commerce
freelance seo
seo friendly
international seo
local seo
multilingual seo
off page seo
on page seo
technical seo

vocal seo
youtube seo

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