What Is A Meta Tag?

A meta tag is snippets of code that provide information about a webpage to search engines and website visitors. They are an essential part of search engine optimisation (SEO) and play a crucial role in helping search engines understand the content and purpose of a webpage.

Meta tags are placed in the head section of a webpage’s HTML code and are not visible to website visitors. Instead, they provide important information to search engines about the content of the webpage, such as the title, description, and keywords.

One of the most common types of meta tags is the meta title tag. This tag specifies the title of the webpage and is displayed as the clickable link in search engine results. The meta title tag should accurately reflect the content of the webpage and contain relevant keywords to help improve search engine rankings.

Another commonly known meta tag is the alt text of an image. This adds text data for images, benefiting people using screen reading devices, and also search engine page crawlers.

There are several other types of meta tags that can provide additional information to search engines and website visitors. These include meta robots tags, which specify how search engines should crawl and index the webpage, and meta viewport tags, which control how the webpage is displayed on different devices.

You can read our brief listicle on the 5 we think are the most important here.

Essentially, meta tags are an important tool for optimising a webpage for search engines and improving its visibility in search engine results. By accurately and strategically using meta tags, website owners can help search engines understand the content of their webpage and attract more visitors to their site.