Meta tags are one of the most common and basic elements of SEO. They are little snippets of code that help describe your website’s content to search engines. These invisible little tags can directly influence how your website appears in Google search results. You might be wondering why meta tags are important and how they can help your e-commerce website. Well hang tight, we will go over what meta tags are, the importance of having meta tags on your website, and which ones you need and which ones you can leave out.
What Exactly Are Meta Tags?
Meta tags are one of the first things SEO professionals take a look at when evaluating your website. The little snippets of code provide valuable information that can help both users and search engines understand what your website is about. There are many different types but the most commonly used meta tags include:
- Title tags – The title tag is the first thing people will see when they come across your website in search engine results pages (SEPRS). This is the title of what your page is about. Having your title tag optimized with natural language coupled with highly searched keywords is key to ranking well in Google Search Results. Each page on your website should have a well-written title.
- Description tags – This is another common meta tag that often gets overlooked or underutilized. The description tag is just that, a description of what your webpage is about. Keep in mind using natural language and search informed keywords are important for optimizing this tag. Each page on your website should have a well-written description.
- Keywords tags (these are mostly gone from the SEO world) – This tag brings a lot of controversies as it has been overused and, in some cases, seen as bad hat SEO. Website owners and marketers in the early days of SEO stuffed as many keywords in this tag to game the system and rank better in the SERPS. Well, Google caught on and no longer recommends this tag unless there are specific reasons to do so. We typically do not recommend having keywords tags on your website.
- Robots tags – This tag is used to inform search engines which pages of your website you want to be indexed in search results. There are many different types of meta robots tags that can be utilized to prevent search engines from crawling certain pages.
- Alt text tags – If you have any images on your website you want your customers to see, then it is important to use an alt text whenever possible. This little code provides a short description of what your image is about that can be helpful to search engines.
- Canonical Tags – If you have pages on your website that are nearly identical, then it is important to tell search engines which ones to prioritize. Having duplicate content can sometimes result in a penalty from Google, so it is important to double check you are using these correctly on your website.
- Header tags (H1, H2, etc.) – These tags are part of your page content. Meaning, each header tag represents a hierarchy of how your page is structured. The order of your header tags (h1 to h6) denotes the importance of each section.
How Do I Find Meta Tags on my Website?
The meta tags can be found in the source code of your website. To view this, you have a few options:
1.) Right click and click on “view source code.”
2.) Use the shortcut Ctrl+U if you are on a PC.
3.) Use Option+Command+U if you are using a Mac.
It is important to know where to find your meta tags on your website so you can ensure you are utilizing them correctly, and that there aren’t any surprises lurking in your code.
Having meta tags that are optimized correctly is one of the most important things you can do for your e-commerce SEO. These little tags might be “invisible,” but they provide key information to both users and search engines. If you are struggling with your meta tags or need more hands to write your titles and descriptions on all of your webpages, give us a call today! Our SEO experts are here to help you every step of the way.