SEARCHENGINES
Meta Tags for SEO: Definition, Examples, & Best Practices

Let’s talk about meta tags: what they are, why they matter, and how to do them better.
If you found this article via a search engine, there’s a good chance you found and clicked this article because of meta tags.
Meta tags are the foundation of SEO, and they are the first thing you’ll find yourself setting up when building a web page.
What Are Meta Tags?
Meta tags are a type of HTML tag that provides search engines with information about a website page.
Let’s take a look at the basic elements.

The title and description tags make up almost the entire entry.
If not for these meta tags, all you’d see in Google SERPs would be my URL.

Title and description tags are the two most-used tags for SEO purposes, but SEO isn’t the only part of digital marketing.
Advanced digital marketing requires the use of even more tags that improve page rank and overall user experience.
Just like this search result, you’ll soon find out that these tags control how your entire digital presence is viewed and navigated.
Machines can read URLs just fine. If I wrote for machines, my website would look like this:

Google prioritizes certain tags because they provide context for people.
I built my website for people as well, so it looks like this:

This polish is what marketing is all about.
In this blog post, we will explore meta tags and see how they affect your overall digital marketing efforts.
While simple, the devil is in the details, and every detail counts.
How Meta Tags Affect Brand Image and Click-through Rates
You absolutely can judge a book by its cover. It’s what covers are designed for.
Your title and meta description tag create the cover for your web page. They’re your first impression on most visitors.
It’s not just about search engines, but how we view the Internet.
Reddit is a basic link-aggregation site that takes away all the bells and whistles.
Reddit depends on the title and image to entice conversations and clicks.

Using meta tags correctly is like using the correct format for a business email.
Sure, you can put whatever you like out there, but there’s a level of professionalism that’s expected at some point.
Even Amazon will only give you a picture, title, and short description to make your point.

Think of these tags as your elevator pitch.
You’re given about as much space as a Tweet to sell your entire brand and product.
This means you need to nail it.
You can’t just call in this detail and polish everything else. If you do, nobody will ever see the rest of what you polished.
We already know how meta tags affect SEO, but that’s not the only element.
Meta tags will make your email marketing and marketing automation efforts easier by providing information for emailed links.
Tags are a crucial element that determines what my automated social media posts look like.

When other bloggers, YouTubers, and social media influencers (and micro-influencers) share your content, tags make it easier.
Think of meta tags as the packaging for your product.
If your packaging isn’t spot-on, nobody will ever buy your product, no matter how great it is!
What are some best practices to implement for tags?
Meta Tag Best Practices
There are a TON of different HTML tags that can be used on a web page. We’re only going to focus on a handful of significant tags.
We’ll start with the one that might have brought you here today.
1. Title Tags
It’s not technically a meta tag, but it shows up in the header and is used as one.
As of July 2017, the character limits for title tags in Google search results are 78 on mobile devices and 70 on a desktop.
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should use all those characters, and 60 is the generally recommended limit.
Long-tail keywords make a difference.
Here are the top meta titles in the SERPs for “How to make content marketing effective.”

By adding the year, we get an entirely new set of results for “how to make content marketing effective 2021.”
Some users will want basic information, while others will want the most current.

By adjusting our title tag, we can affect which of these searches we rank for.
Ultimately, the goal is to hit both, but that’s not always feasible.
Make sure your keyword is in your title, or you’ll find your articles buried in search results.
For example, when I search for the “best tacos in Tucson,” some restaurants are on page 9below, even Del Taco.
That’s a wasted opportunity for that taco capital of the country!

These small businesses could greatly improve their search results, sales, and ROI by simply adding “best tacos in Tucson” to their title tags.
Here’s a sample of the HTML required for a title tag located in your header.
<head>
<title>The Best Title Example I Could Come Up With</title>
</head>
In WordPress, it’s as easy as giving your page a title.
You really can’t miss it.

That’s all there is to it!
2. Image Tags
Like title tags, Image tags aren’t labeled “meta.”
They’re clearly used by search engines, link aggregators, and other sites to identify your site.
There are two image descriptions actually crammed into one tag.
Here’s what the HTML code looks like.
<img src=“image.jpg” alt=“image description” title=“image tooltip”>
Both the alt and title tags should be defined for the best experience.
The title displays on your screen when you hover your cursor over it.
The alt text displays when the image can’t be rendered (or is spoken to the blind and visually impaired).
When uploading an image to WordPress, you’ll be prompted to enter the title, caption, alt text, and description.

The more fields you fill out (even if you use the same information), the more searchable your images become.
It’s also a matter of ADA website compliance.
There are approximately 7.5 million people with some level of visual impairment in the U.S. alone.
That’s a huge segment of the population that wouldn’t have a great user experience without alt image tags.
Optimize your images for search engines and users.
3. Description Meta Tags
A meta description tag gives you a chance to provide an overview of the page’s content.
They’re limited to around 160 characters and aren’t directly tied to Google’s search algorithms at all.
Once again, the reason you need description tags is to improve the user experience.
Description tags encourage click-throughs.
Here’s what the HTML looks like:
<head>
<meta name= ”description” content=”This is an example of the text that will show up in search results. Read on to learn more about description tags.”>
</head>
Without a meta description, Google will default to whatever preview sentence it feels best encompasses the content.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
This post doesn’t have a meta description (I rarely use them), and it ranks well.

Of course, my blogs are filled with relevant content in short, sweet sentences. Most of them would work as descriptions on their own.
Still, there’s no harm in adding additional information to make your content more searchable.
4. Robots Noindex and Nofollow Meta Tags
Robot meta tags aren’t always necessary.
By default, all of the pages and links you create on your website are indexed as ‘follow’ by search bots and web crawlers.
Whenever you want to redirect them, you’ll need a robot meta tag.
Here’s the noindex HTML code:
<html><head>
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex” />
(…)
</head>
This would be within the header and indicate this page doesn’t need to be indexed.
It’s useful for syndicated and duplicate content that your customers/readers could use, but you don’t want credit in search indexes.
Here’s the HTML for a robot nofollow.
<meta name=”robots” content=”nofollow”>
This is used for links you don’t necessarily want to endorse.
For example, readers leaving links in my comments aren’t exactly endorsed by me, so a nofollow tag above the comments section keeps my site clean for bots.
Here’s a great infographic on when and how to use nofollow tags.

Now we get to one of the most controversial meta tags.
5. Keyword Meta Tags
Keyword tags aren’t used by search algorithms to determine search ranking.
Here’s what the HTML looks like:
<meta name=”keywords” content=”HTML, CSS, XML, JavaScript”>
I coach my SEO clients to ignore keyword tags because they don’t affect SEO.
That doesn’t necessarily make them useless, however. They’re especially useful in WordPress.
Keyword tags and categories can help Google determine which page on your site should rank for a search.
They also create a page in WordPress that provides one more indexed page.

This means that, while your blog posts are focused on long-tail keywords, your tag and category pages have feeds covering the shorter keywords.
Categories can be used for the URL format, providing one more keyword to the page address.
This is accomplished under Settings > Permalinks in WordPress.

Adding this format provides context to your content.
Google loves context for search results!
Keywords also provide a big-picture overview of how many pages you have for each keyword.
You can use them to help plan your editorial calendar.
6. Viewport Tags
You don’t spend much time thinking about viewports, but they’re especially important in today’s mobile-first world of search.
On mobile devices, pages are shown in a popup window called a viewport that extends past the device’s border.
Here’s an illustration of what I’m talking about.

Developers can set the viewport size to increase mobile usability.
WordPress users can check this tag to learn this information for their templates.
You probably didn’t know that unless you’re already a web developer.
Since Google increasingly focuses on mobile-friendly websites, this meta tag could mean the difference between success and mobile failure.
Now that you have a basic understanding of meta tags and why they’re important, I’ll show you some of my favorite tools for manipulating them.
Free Tools to Add and Check Your Meta Tags
Don’t worry if this all sounds overwhelming—there are tons of tools to make it easy to get meta tags right. Here are two of my favorites.
Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress
Yoast is a powerful SEO plugin for WordPress and one of the most-downloaded SEO and meta tags tools.
With Yoast, all of the pages and posts you publish have back-end options to increase social sharing, optimize SEO, update tags, and other metadata.

With Yoast installed on your WordPress site, a few clicks and a few seconds of your time are all it takes to add meta-tagging to your process.
Yoast also allows you to enter a focus keyword that doesn’t get added to the meta tags, allowing the back-end program to analyze your post.
BuzzStream Meta Tag Extractor
If you need a quick chart of the metadata that’s being used by your competition, BuzzStream’s Meta Tag Extractor is a sleek and simple solution.
Copy and paste a list of URLs, and you’ll be presented with the meta tag information.

There’s even an option to download as a CSV file so that you can scrape large lists quickly.
It’s a quick and easy way to organize this data when you need it.
This free online tool does its job without all the bells and whistles.
Less Popular (but Still Useful!) Meta Tags
To be fully transparent, here’s a chart of HTML meta tags.

An author meta tag can be used to tell search engines who wrote a piece of content.
Authors have been used in the past for search results, but it’s not a factor anymore. However, you might use author tags if you run a multi-author blog.
WordPress does add this information to blogs when multiple users are contributing content.
It’s more a badge of honor for bloggers than anything else.
Most of the rest define parameters that should already be controlled on a server level.
While I ignored these meta tags, it doesn’t mean you have to. Feel free to add whatever information you’d like.
It doesn’t help search rankings, but it doesn’t hurt them, either.
Meta Tags FAQs
Meta tags are a type of HTML tag with information to share about your page. This helps search engines understand what it’s about so you can show up in the relevant search results.
Meta tags are important for SEO because they make sure search engines know what your content is about. Based on these tags, search engines will be able to show the website in the appropriate results. This way, people can find you easily.
Meta tags can provide hidden information that can be read by assistive technology. For those who with visual impairment, the image alt text can provide image descriptions for them.
Meta tags can be added directly into the HTML. You can also add them in tools like WordPress. There, you can add image alt tags, title tags and meta descriptions.
Meta Tags Conclusion
Meta tags are a basic part of HTML—and they can impact SEO.
Back in the early days of the internet, they were a signaling factor for search engines to understand what content is on a page.
The internet (and our relationship with it) has evolved exponentially since then.
Contextual search, AI digital assistants, and mobile devices are changing the way we view content.
Search engines are incentivized to provide the best search results possible, so meta tags are less important.
However, some, such as the titles and meta descriptions, are more important than ever before.
While less metadata is used, it’s still the first impression you’ll make on both robots and people.
What do your website’s meta tags say about you?
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SEARCHENGINES
Google Discover Showing Older Content Since Follow Feature Arrived

Typically, Google Discover shows content that is less than a day old, but it can show content that is weeks, months, or even years old. However, typically, Google will show more recent content in the Discover feed. Well, that may have changed with the new Google follow feature.
Glenn Gabe, who is a very active Google Discover user, noticed that since the Follow feature rolled out, he has been seeing content that is weeks and months old way more often than before the follow feature rolled out. Glenn wrote on X that “this could also be playing a role. i.e. Google isn’t providing as much recent content, but instead, focusing on providing targeted content based on the topics you are following.”
It makes sense that if you follow a specific topic and if Google Discover only shows the most authoritative types of content, it might be hard for Google to find new content on that topic. So it does make sense that Google may show older content more often for that specific topic you follow.
Here are screenshots Glenn shared:
Have you noticed this in your Discover feed?
Forum discussion at X.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Core Update Done Followed By Intense Search Volatility, New Structured Data, Google Ads Head Steps Down & 20 Years Covering Search

Google’s November 2023 core update finally finished rolling out this week, and it was the longest core update rollout. Then, a day later, we saw more intense Google search ranking volatility and chatter. Google added new organization structured data and also added a new profile page and discussion forum structured data, both with Search Console and Rich Results test support. Google’s crawl rate setting is going away soon. Google Search Console went down a couple of times this week. Google spoke about the SEO value of bringing back 404 pages for links. Did you see the Google patent for what appears to be SGE? Microsoft is working to bring GPT-4 Turbo to Copilot and Bing Chat. Google Ads won’t allow personalized ads for consumer finance topics in February 2024. Google Local Service Ads has new impression metrics. Google Ads released its Ads API schedule for 2024. Google is testing Gray accepted labels in the search results. Google is testing line separators between sitelinks. Google is testing an interview label for news results. Google local photos is testing hearts and other emotion reactions. Google is testing removing the cache link from the search result listings. Google’s head of search ads, Jerry Dischler, is stepping down after 15 years. And I’ve been covering the search industry and search for 20 years now. And if you want to help sponsor those vlogs, go to patreon.com/barryschwartz. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.
Sponsored by BruceClay, who has been doing search marketing optimization since 1996 and also has an amazing SEO training platform.
Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your favorite podcast player to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed. For the original iTunes version, click here
Search Topics of Discussion:
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SEARCHENGINES
Generative Summaries For Search Results

Google has a published patent named “Generative summaries for search results” which is believed to be the patent behind the Search Generative Experience launch we saw earlier this year. This patent was filed on March 20, 2023 and approved on September 26, 2023 under the patent ID US11769017B1.
Juan Gonzalez Villa posted a thread on X breaking it down, which I will embed below so you can read it.
The abstract reads:
At least selectively utilizing a large language model (LLM) in generating a natural language (NL) based summary to be rendered in response to a query. In some implementations, in generating the NL based summary additional content is processed using the LLM. The additional content is in addition to query content of the query itself and, in generating the NL based summary, can be processed using the LLM and along with the query content—or even independent of the query content. Processing the additional content can, for example, mitigate occurrences of the NL based summary including inaccuracies and/or can mitigate occurrences of the NL based summary being over-specified and/or under-specified.
Here are Juan’s posts:
Before we start: there are currently no other patents assigned to Google mentioning generative AI techniques and search.
There might be other patents on the same topic still pending, but I believe this document is highly relevant to Google SGE as it works right now. pic.twitter.com/L4Ly5Ows2c
— Juan González Villa (@seostratega) November 29, 2023
1. Receiving a query associated with a client device. The query can be explicitly entered by a user or automatically generated based on context.
2. Selecting a set of search result documents (SRDs) that are responsive to the query and related or recent queries.
— Juan González Villa (@seostratega) November 29, 2023
4. Processing the SRD content snippets using an LLM to generate LLM output. An optional summarization prompt can also be included.
5. Generating a natural language summary using the LLM output. This leverages robustness of the LLM while constraining it to the SRD content.
— Juan González Villa (@seostratega) November 29, 2023
This checks out with something stated in the document “An Overview of SGE”, made public by Google around SGE’s launch, although we didn’t have any more details.
The patent now provides plenty of detail around how and why several models are available and can be used: pic.twitter.com/U035N35Bxl
— Juan González Villa (@seostratega) November 29, 2023
3. The selection can be based on:
• Processing the query with a classifier to predict best model(s)
• Detecting certain terms in the query to indicate suitable model(s)
• Considering search result types/content to determine appropriate model(s)— Juan González Villa (@seostratega) November 29, 2023
So by dynamically selecting from multiple candidate generative models, the invention aims to optimize accuracy and efficiency by choosing the most suited model(s) for any given query.
The patent also provide some details on how the links to sources work:
— Juan González Villa (@seostratega) November 29, 2023
1. “A portion, of a visually rendered NL summary, that is supported by a first SRD can be selectable (and optionally underlined, highlighted, and/or otherwise annotated).
A selection of the portion can result in navigating to a link corresponding to the first SRD.”
— Juan González Villa (@seostratega) November 29, 2023
3. The links can be general links to the SRDs or specific anchor links to the portions that provide the verification.
4. The linkified portions can be determined based on comparing the summary content to SRD content using encoder models to identify verified portions. pic.twitter.com/zlJFFO2c6Q
— Juan González Villa (@seostratega) November 29, 2023
Here’s how confidence works, according to the patent:
1. Confidence measures can be generated for portions of the summary or for the summary as a whole.
The confidence measures are then used to determine which confidence annotation from a set of candidates should be applied.
— Juan González Villa (@seostratega) November 29, 2023
3. A textual “high confidence”, “medium confidence”, or “low confidence” annotation can be annotated for the NL based summary as a whole.
Each of the portions of the NL based summary can be annotated with a corresponding color that reflects a degree of confidence in that portion
— Juan González Villa (@seostratega) November 29, 2023
Thanks for reading so far.
Here’s the link to the patent: https://t.co/AtGMiWqzG9
Now, I’ll explain how I found out about this patent, and another interesting thing:
What Google SGE and Featured Snippets have in common… 🤓⤵
— Juan González Villa (@seostratega) November 29, 2023
According to his own career summary, he worked in SGE at Google between Nov 2022 and Sep 2023. He is now a Google Fellow, the highest rung on the ladder for Google engineers, which they reach thanks to “consistently outstanding accomplishments”. pic.twitter.com/aZmpfkajmI
— Juan González Villa (@seostratega) November 29, 2023
Their careers afterwards were very similar: they both went to Apple, where they worked in Search and Siri, and came back to Google at the end of 2022 to work in SGE.
So… how did I find the patent? I decided to look for patents by any of these two engineers and there it was. 💡 pic.twitter.com/1uUPi9myoj
— Juan González Villa (@seostratega) November 29, 2023
Their careers afterwards were very similar: they both went to Apple, where they worked in Search and Siri, and came back to Google at the end of 2022 to work in SGE.
So… how did I find the patent? I decided to look for patents by any of these two engineers and there it was. 💡 pic.twitter.com/1uUPi9myoj
— Juan González Villa (@seostratega) November 29, 2023
If you enjoyed this thread, any feedback, likes and/or RTs are appreciated.
Also, here’s a post version of this thread:https://t.co/JSt9qNcVTr
— Juan González Villa (@seostratega) November 29, 2023
Nice write up Juan!
Forum discussion at X.
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