The meta tags are a very important part of the HTML code of your web page. They are read by the search engines but are not displayed as a part of your web page content. Usually they include a concise summary of the web page content and you should include your relevant keywords in them. Most meta tags are included within the ‘header’ html code of a website. They are title, description, keywords and robot tags, but currently the most important two are title and description. These two are displayed by search engines when listing your website in search results.

How to optimize meta tags?divider

The title tag and the meta description should include keywords relevant to the content of the web page they describe. You should consider the length and the order of the characters/words included in each of the meta tags. Note that the search engine robots read from left to right and those words that come first are more important than those that come towards the end of the page.

Title Tagdivider

It could be said that the title is one of the most important factors for a successful search engine optimization of your website. Located within the <head> section, right above the Description and Keywords tag, it provides summarized information about your website. Besides that, the title is what appears on search engines result page (SERP). The title tags should be between 10-60 characters. This is not a law, but a relative guideline – a few more symbols is not a problem, you won’t get penalized for having longer title tags, but the search engine will simply ignore the longer part. Make sure the most important keyword you have decided to fight for is used in your title tag and as early in the phrase as possible.

Meta Description Tag

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The description tag should be written in such way that it will show what information your website contains or what your website is about. Write short and clear sentences that will not confuse your visitors. The description tag should be less than 200 characters. The meta description tag also has a great importance for the SEO optimization of your page. It is most important for the prospect visitor when looking at the search engine result page – this tag is often displayed there and helps you to distinguish your site from the others in the list. Again, use one or more of your most important keywords in that tag.

Meta Keywords Tag

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Lately, the meta keyword tag has become the least important tag for the search engines and especially Google. Many websites have stopped adding keywords meta tags.

Meta Robots Tagdivider

This tag helps you to specify the way your website will be crawled by the search engine. There are 4 types of Meta Robots Tag:

Index, Follow – The search engine robots will start crawling your website from the main/index page and then will continue to the rest of the pages.

Index, NoFollow – The search engine robots will start crawling your website from the main/index page and then will NOT continue to the rest of the pages.

NoIndex, Follow – The search engine robots will skip the main/index page, but will crawl the rest of the pages.

NoIndex, NoFollow – None of your pages will be crawled by the robot and your website will not be indexes by the search engines.

If you want to be sure that all robots will crawl your website we advise you to add a “Index, follow” meta robot tag. Please note that most of the search engine crawlers will index your page staring from the index page, continuing to the rest of the pages, even if you do not have a robot tag. So if you wish your page not to be crawled or to be crawled differently use the appropriate robot tag.

How to edit meta tags?divider

You can edit your meta tags through the File Manager in the cPanel of your hosting account. You need to edit the file of each web page. The file contains the HTML code of the page.