Meta tags may seem like foreign territory for new SEO and marketing strategists.
With a little bit of HTML and many different guidelines and limitations, it may seem a bit daunting at first. Hopefully, after reading this article, you will begin to understand why meta tags are SO incredibly important.
What Is It?
Meta descriptions act like little snippet-summary descriptions of a webpage’s content. As a short summary, metadata is able to compress and digest a page’s content in a few sentences to help search engine bots categorize and rank your page.
These tags are their own entity, and as such, they don’t actually appear on the public webpage. They exist in a page’s HTML – typically at the top of the page – to help search engines quickly find the tag description.
Title Tags VS Meta Tags
I know what you’re thinking. “I have title tags, and those are clearly enough to help categorize my site!” Well, although title tags are ESSENTIAL, metadata are like the bacon to a scrambled eggs breakfast platter. A page’s title usually consists of several words or a short phrase that targets frequently searched phrases. That being said, the title may not be long enough to give an accurate description of the entirety of the page’s content.
Tags allow content developers to better explain what their page focuses on, and this can help attract searchers to a page. A better description means more traffic, which means better rankings. Everyone’s happy, right?
How to Build a Meta Description Tag
Meta tags include a few short sentences or a very small paragraph, depending on what type of site you have and the site’s popularity. Here is an example of a tag that would hold a page description:
<meta name=”description” content=”A description of the page” />
Adding a meta tag to your site provides search engines with multiple options to choose from when picking a page description. It is always beneficial to have a description tag, even if the search engine doesn’t display it, as search engines can better categorize a site with a description than one without.
Still Not Convinced?
If you are still contemplating why metadata benefits SEO, here is what you need to understand. Meta description tags give you another chance to target customers and web traffic. Extra keyword targeting possibility, targeted description text, and a quick page content summary all increase the likelihood that your site receives the clicks that you’re hoping to earn.