Why Meta Tags Are Important For SEO

Adeniyi SalauApril 12, 2023

0 0 4 minutes read

Why Meta Tags are important For SEO

It’s a medium weight on-page SEO signal although it doesn’t have a direct impact to higher rankings. It plays a big role in enticing the user to click-through to your listing
If you have an uninspiring or keyword-stuffed meta description, you may get half the clicks of a well written and more click-worthy one. So they really are worth the time and effort. In this article, I want to talk about why Meta Tags are important for SEO.

The meta description can be thought of as your chance to sell the page, so it encourages the searcher to click on your listing. If the page has any unique selling points that none or few of the competitors have, then list them here.

How to optimize meta description tags:

Make descriptive and engaging (this is the most important part to get right)

Try to make your listing stand out from the crowd. Does the page contain any unique selling points?
Describe the page in a natural language and enticing enough to encourage click-throughs

Keep short and concise

Max space is 156 characters (around two short sentences)

Be careful with keywords

Include the main keyword or a close variation
Keywords in meta description DO NOT directly improve rankings, so avoid keyword stuffing

Some extra info:
Occasionally Google will write its own Meta Description tags in the SERPs if one hasn’t been written or isn’t deemed relevant enough to the keywords used by a searcher.

This meta description includes some benefits, that the process is going to be quick and easy. It’s written with the user in mind with “your specific riding habits”. It includes the main keyword but in a way that makes the snippet relevant to the user and not spammy.

The chosen meta description tag is: Quick and easy snowboard size calculator and sizing charts, to help you find the right gear for you and your specific riding habits.

Note:
In this example, the user searches for “snowboard sizing” and even though that exact phrase isn’t mentioned, a close variant (snowboard size) is mentioned, so Google chooses to bold the text. When text is bolded, this improves the chances of the listing being clicked on.

Over time a page will build up trust and authority which is assigned to its URL. Changing a URL without redirecting appropriately can lose trust. Because of this, it’s best not to change a URL where possible and to try and get them right from the start.

How to optimize images:

Add a description in the Alt text

Try to accurately describe the image and this sometimes means including keywords
Make them concise, typically two to five words

Make filenames meaningful

Make them concise, typically two to five words
Filenames and Alt text can be the same but they don’t have to be

Make images web-friendly

Gif, Jpeg and PNG
Balance of small file size and good quality

We need to be honest when describing images through Alt text and filenames, but where it makes sense we can sprinkle some keywords in to add to the overall relevancy. You DO NOT need to be really strict here e.g. sometimes you can include your P1 and P2 keywords but otherwise, you won’t be able to.

If you have multiple images, they should have differing Alt text/filenames, otherwise, this can look like keyword stuffing.

There isn’t an exact science here and it’s important that the Alt text and filenames are descriptive and accurate first – and contain keywords or related words second. In this case, the Alt text contains one of the main keywords and the filename is a related word that will add to the overall relevancy of the page. You’ll always want to keep the size of images relatively low and often much smaller than the original image size. This helps make the web page load quicker.

Action Point
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I know you might agree with some of the points that I have raised in this article. You might not agree with some of the issues raised. Let me know your views about the topic discussed. We will appreciate it if you can drop your comment. Thanks in anticipation.

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