Metatags: what meta tags are and which ones matter for SEO
The tags that explain your page to Google and which ones are worth getting right
Metatags is an English term that, in Spanish, is usually translated as “elementos meta” or “meta etiquetas” (meta elements or meta tags). They are tags (text strings and lines of HTML code) placed inside the HTML code of websites.
The main purpose of metatags is to present information in a very specific way, both to people searching and to search engine indexing robots, providing the right information so the website looks attractive and, at the same time, ranks much better in search engines.
There are different types of metatags and each has its own characteristics; not all of them are relevant for SEO. But that doesn’t make it any less important to know them and use them properly.
Since metatags have two main functions, ranking the web page and showing users what they will find if they visit our search result, it is vital to write them smartly.
In other words, reaching the top positions in the search results is of little or no use if users then don’t click on our result because the title and description metatags used aren’t attractive to them.
That’s why here are some tips for using metatags properly, so that both Google and your potential visitors like them:
- Character limit. Google changes this from time to time, but currently the maximum is 55 characters for the title and 155 characters for the description. Anything longer will be cut off and replaced with an ellipsis.
- Keywords. Both the title and the description should include the page’s main keyword, and the closer it is to the beginning, the better.
- Don’t use two identical metatags. In SEO, duplicate content is penalized by search engines. Therefore, it’s vital that the meta tags are unique for each page.
- Write for people too. The meta tags you create must be understood by search engine spiders, but also by people, so write with people in mind above all.
- Always publish with all metatags already created. Before making the website public and having it indexed by Google, you need to have the meta tags defined as you need them, because changing them later is costly and it takes time for the page to rank again.
All metatags have their relevance and are designed for a purpose, but when it comes to improving our website’s SEO ranking, some are more important than others.
Here is a list highlighting the most important metatags from an SEO point of view.
These are the ones you must always have on your pages, as they are vital both for search engines and for their users:
- Metatitle: indicates the title that will be shown in the list of search results. It should have between 7 and 10 words, as well as include keywords, be descriptive and encourage the user to click on it.
<title>¿Qué es email marketing? Trucos para ganar dinero</title>
- Metadescription: the summary of the web page’s content that is shown to the user. It should have between 15 and 20 words.
<meta name="description" content=“¿El email marketing te parece complicado? En Mailrelay te damos las claves para crear campañas de email marketing, con total garantía de entregabilidad y para que puedas ganar convertir cada campaña de email en una fuente de ingresos para tu negocio.">
- Metacontent-type: indicates the type of encoding used on the page, so the browser knows which character set to use and the texts are displayed correctly.
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
These are vital for many SEO experts but others don’t consider them relevant. But it is important to use them so that Google’s robot better understands the structure and content of our website. The most notable of them is metarobots.
- Metarobots: it is commonly used to tell search engine crawlers whether or not we want them to index the page.
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
These don’t carry much weight when it comes to ranking our web page, but they are useful at very specific moments of indexing.
- Metakeyword: it is used when the website has an internal search engine, because the engine usually checks the keywords and thus offers more accurate results.
<meta name="keywords" content="marketing, email, masivos, envios">
- Metaauthor: it is used to indicate the name of the content’s author, which is useful for improving a person’s online reputation and authority.
<meta name="author" content=“Soporte Mailrelay">
- Metarating: it is used to indicate whether or not the content is suitable for minors. If you have any content of that kind, you must declare it to avoid problems for not doing so.
<meta name="rating" content="General" />