Meta Tags: Abused, Neglected, and Great for SEO and Clickthrough

It’s crazy to believe only 1 in 3 websites are using meta tags.

That means only 1 in 3 sites are getting the most from their SEO.

There’s a huge gap in the use of meta descriptions and canonical content tags, too!

BuiltWith.com has meta tag usage broken down by the numbers – it’s shocking…

Meta Tag Usage

Yeah, meta tags don’t have much SEO weight as before.

That’s not an excuse to leave them out.

Especially since they improve website usability and can increase clickthrough rate to your website!

Let’s use this post an opportunity to put using meta tags back in action!

Meta Tag Attributes: What They Are and What You Should Know

Do you ever take the time to fill out meta tags when creating content?

Yeah… this stuff:

Meta Tag Example

The meta tags are there to help search engines and readers understand the page and its content. Think of them like the index of a book. Google sees the tags and gets an overview.

Here are the meta tags from most to least important:

Meta Robots
Title Tag
Meta Description
Meta Keywords

… and why they’re ranked this way:

Meta Robots

The meta robots tag is #1 because you’re either telling Google:

Index this page
Don’t index this page

Suppose you accidentally chose or coded noindex on the page… well, Google sees it but won’t place it in search engine results. This attribute is usually left for backend pages like logins or accounts. It has a purpose, but you wouldn’t want to apply it to your main content.

There’s also:

Follow
Nofollow

The follow attribute tells Google to pass “weight” to the next page while nofollow says “hey, don’t pay attention to the pages I’m linking”. You’d want to ensure your main content has follow attributes while the personal pages (again, login, account, ETC) don’t.

Title Tag

Title tags are important. Really important.

They have the biggest impact on SEO for a couple reasons:

Keyword usage
Improves clickthrough

The right title can improve your click through in the range of 20% to 730%. This high click-through rate is a major signal for Google’s RankBrain.

Better RankBrain = better search rankings.

So… make sure every page has a unique, optimized title.

Meta Description

The description comes in at a close second for two reasons:

Houses keyword(s)
Gives a user a reason to click

Some like to judge a book by its cover. Others will read the back. The description is a preview of what they can expect. You should always have unique descriptions for each page.

Meta Keywords

Meta keywords fell out of favor when people kept abusing them. Honestly, you probably can avoid these completely. But, it takes a few seconds to include them so why not? Use the main and secondary keywords related to the content in this area.

Meta Tags for SEO: Refining the Meta Keywords Google Loves

Meta tags are easy to neglect because you simply forget since you’re excited to hit publish. Likewise, some webmasters don’t want to touch the code in fear or breaking the site. Or, they don’t know HTML.

Those aren’t good excuses.

It takes you what… a minute or two to include them?

Here’s what you should do…

1. Select the meta keyword based on the content topic

Your keyword selection will mirror what you’ve chosen as the main topic of the content.

For example, we chose ‘Meta Tags’ which if you were to do a CTRL + F to find all instances you’ll notice quite a few peppered throughout the post.

Finding Keywords for Meta Tags from a Post

So… we’ll use that in our title, description, and tags.

2. Work on creating a title and keep rewriting it until you get the one that’s great

Titles are like headlines.

You can use headline formulas to craft the title to improve SEO and clickthrough.

Meta Title Examples

Let’s consider our ‘Meta Tags’ keyword, we could have gone with:

Meta Tags: A 4-Step Guide to Semantic Data
How to Craft Meta Tags for Better SEO and Click Through
4 Important Meta Tags Every Site Should Use

Write a couple of headline variations.

20 – 30 will do the trick.

Then come back to the one that jumps out. And, if you’re really a stickler for optimization, pass a sample around your network to see which one they think is best.

3. Repeat the process of refining but with the meta description

Here are a few shortcuts for making good descriptions:

Tell them what they’ll learn
Use a cliffhanger to draw their attention
Lead strong with an eye-opening stat
Give them something rewarding by doing

Writing good, SEO-friendly meta descriptions isn’t hard if you lift the best bits of information from the post. This is the sentence or two that really jumps out. Rework it as the description.

Meta Description Example

We liked this example because of the ‘over my shoulder’ bit… makes it interesting.

Otherwise, do like you did the title and keep rewriting it (and testing it) until you’ve got the one.

4. Spend the few seconds to add meta keywords (because you’re already there)

Make a list of the main and secondary keywords
Include them as the meta keywords
Keep it to about 3-5 keywords

Don’t overthink it.

SEO Meta the Easy Way: The Yoast Plugin and SEO Meta Tag Generators

There’s an all-around easier way of creating and using meta tags with your pages and posts. This is done using the Yoast SEO plugin. It’s free and comes with the option to modify meta tags.

Yoast for Meta Tags