Meta tags are tags or codes that are placed in the HTML header of a website to provide information about the website to search engines and other crawlers. They are used to help search engines understand the content and structure of a website, and can improve the visibility and ranking of a website in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Several types of meta tags can be used on a website, including:
- Title tag: This is the most important meta tag, and it defines the title of a webpage. The title tag should be descriptive and concise, and it should accurately reflect the content of the webpage.
- Meta description: This meta tag provides a summary of the content of a webpage. The meta description should be concise and compelling, and it should entice users to click through to the webpage.
- Keyword tag: This meta tag lists the keywords or phrases that are relevant to the content of a webpage. The keyword tag is no longer used by most search engines, but it can still be useful for internal site search engines.
- Robots tag: This meta tag is used to control how search engines crawl and index the content of a webpage. It can be used to prevent certain pages or sections of a website from being crawled or indexed.
- Canonical tag: This meta tag is used to indicate that a webpage is a duplicate or alternative version of another webpage. It helps search engines understand the relationship between different versions of a webpage, and it can improve the ranking of the canonical version in SERPs.
- Meta robots tag: This meta tag is used to control how search engines crawl and index the content of a webpage. It can be used to prevent certain pages or sections of a website from being crawled or indexed.
- HTML5 meta tags: These are new meta tags that have been introduced in HTML5. They include the “itemprop” tag, which is used to define the properties of a webpage, and the “rel” tag, which is used to define the relationship between different web pages.
It’s important to note that while meta tags can be useful for improving the visibility and ranking of a website, they should be used in moderation and conjunction with other SEO techniques. Overusing or misusing meta tags can result in penalties from search engines.
