A lot of website owners hear the term “meta tag” at some point and aren’t really sure what it is. Then they start to panic and wonder if their website designer included this. This topic can be rather extensive, so I will just cover some brief points.
Firstly, there are many types of meta tags. These tags are within the code of your web page. Basically what the tags do is define certain information about your site that may be important to a search engine or computer. A few examples are title, description, keywords, and author (but there are many more).
So, are they important?
Yes, sort of. They are based on earlier Internet technologies, and many search mechanisms ignore them. However, some tags – like the title tag – are still considered important to include, especially for search engine exposure.
Should your pages have meta tags?
Yes. At least title, description, and keywords tags are a good idea. It certainly does not hurt your site to include these, and it might help.
The most important meta tag is the title tag.
This is the title you see displayed in the web browser (in the top bar). Even after a couple of decades of Internet behavior changes, experts still agree that the title tag is an important communication tool that tells both browsers and search engines what your site is about. It should be one of the first things in your code, so it is one of the first opportunities a search engine has to read about your site. So – this is an ideal place to include strong key phrases about your business. Furthermore, search marketing professionals will stress that you should strive for a variation on each title tag page to page.
How can I tell if my pages have meta tags?
View your web page in a browser, right-click (PC), and select the View Source option (might be called Page Source or something similar). This will display some of the code for your page (excluding certain programming like PHP or asp). Toward the top, there should be several lines that start with <meta name=….
WEBii can help with enhancing your site for search friendliness, and this is one of the things we look for in that process. Contact us if you would like assistance improving your website’s code.