For example, if the meta keyword "download" is often entered on a web page, the page will be easier to find when searching for "download". The small hurdle of "filling" the keyword meta tag into the search results to bring web pages forward lead to an abuse of the tag.
2. Browser Compatibility. In another official webmaster support page, Google encourages the use of valid HTML in order to ensure proper rendering of web pages. Valid HTML code will help assure that your site renders well across all browsers, including the version GoogleBot uses for rendering websites.
Targeting about 5 keywords (each with a monthly search volume of 100+) to start with is recommended for most small businesses. For some businesses, that might not seem a lot, but targeting 5 keywords doesn't mean that your website will only rank for 5 keywords and get traffic from 5 keywords.
Use the meta keywords tag to describe the page. Just remember that you're still not likely to rank better than other pages that have textual information. Search engines are textual creatures. Give them what they want.
A meta description (sometimes called a meta description attribute or tag) is an HTML element that describes and summarizes the contents of your page for the benefit of users and search engines. Why meta descriptions are important to you and to your SEO rankings.
Start Simple
- Step 1 – Adjust the title in the source – HTML Title Tag. The first phrase you will see and will click on as a result in the search engines is the title.
- Step 2 – Add a relevant description – meta description tag.
- Step 3 – Make sure your page works on mobile devices.
- Step 4 – Bring it all together.
By using these meta tags, you can boost your website's SEO.
- Title Tag. The title tag is the first HTML element that specifies what your web page is about.
- Meta Description.
- Canonical Tag.
- Alternative Text Tag.
- Robots Meta Tag.
- Open Graph Meta Tags and Twitter Cards.
- Header Tags.
- Responsive Design Meta Tag.
The best practice to separate a keyword in the meta tag is a comma. As we can see in the above example, the keywords in meta description are repeated multiple times with “Buy Books Online” and “Buying Books Online”. Moreover, the title tag has an attractive CTA (call-to-action) that can surely attract more clicks.
Google introduced the new meta keywords tag specifically for news publishers back in 2012 and quietly stopped supporting it months ago. Google did not announce this change, so publishers, like us at Search Engine Land, have continued to use it.
Check whether all your pages and your content have title tags and meta descriptions. Start paying more attention to your headings and how you structure your content. Don't forget to mark up your images with alt text. Use robot meta tags to guide search engines on how they should access your content.
The importance of meta tags is that the search engines read them in order to compare if these keywords and the description are related to the visible content.
At the bare minimum, one; some pages may have a singular focus that answers only one query. It's much more likely that you'll want to target two or three keywords per page, even if they're just close variations. Any more than four is a bit crowded; after all, each page only has one title tag and meta description.
So it's important to know that SEO does still matter—to a degree. For example, it's still very important that your long-tail keyword shows up in your page title, URL, subheaders, image descriptions, meta descriptions, etc. In other words, keyword placement is still important. But frequency is not.
Meta descriptions can be any length, but Google generally truncates snippets to ~155–160 characters. It's best to keep meta descriptions long enough that they're sufficiently descriptive, so we recommend descriptions between 50–160 characters.
The main difference between keywords and tags is where you will find them. Keywords are actually a part of the content and are used to identify what the content is all about. On the other hand, tags are just placed by the creator of the content to describe what the content is and what it relates to.
If you want to find out whether a given page is using meta tags, just right-click anywhere on the page and select “View Page Source.” A new tab will open in Chrome (in Firefox, it'll be a pop-up window). The part at the top, or “head” of the page, is where the meta tags would be.
Go to Google Search Console Home Page and retrieve your HTML Meta tag code.
- click the Manage Site button next to the site you want, and then click Verify this site.
- If HTML tag is not visible on the Recommended method tab, click the Alternate methods tab.
- Select HTML tag and copy the code.
Select "Google Tag Manager" and click "Verify." If the Google Tag Manager code is found, you should see a screen letting you know your site has been verified.
Meta tags present information about a page to web browsers and other digital agents. Most meta tags contain a "name" attribute and a "content" attribute. Add a custom meta tag to any page by using the options in the "SEO, Custom Meta Tags" settings box.
If you need to add meta tags to a site (to, for example, verify site ownership with Google) follow these steps:
- Click Publish.
- Click the Settings tab.
- Under Meta Tags, enter each meta tag in name=content format (one pair per line), where name is the name of the meta tag and content is its content.
- Click Publish Changes.
A meta verification snippet is a meta tag for verifying that you are the owner of a website. This is used for example by Google Search Console. By adding the meta verification snippet in the correct location, the third party service would be able to detect the snippet and confirm the website ownership.
